PDFalerts

June 23, 08 - Adobe have released a critical patch for Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat.

Read Adobe’s security bulletin here: Update available for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.1.2

Summary:

A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.1.2. This vulnerability would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Adobe recommends users of Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader install the 8.1.2 Security Update 1 patch.

I agree with the sentiments expressed in this PC World article Has Adobe Taken a Wrong Turn with Acrobat 9?.

Since the release of Acrobat 7 it seems like Adobe have run out of new PDF related ideas for Acrobat. Has it reached it’s peak point? Some of the non PDF related features they’ve introduced in Acrobat 8 and 9 would suggest that it has. There’s only really two paths let open to Adobe — 1) finish cannibalizing the feature ideas developed by the third party plug-in community and 2) use Acrobat’s good name to introduce other non purely PDF related products and services, such as Acrobat Connect Pro and Acrobat.com.

Mean while back-at-the-pdf-ranch Adobe have to contend with a growing number of applications that support PDF conversion natively (Office 2007, Google Docs, OpenOffice, etc) and cost-effective Acrobat alternatives like Nitro PDF Professional and PDF Converter Professional, which are slowly eating away at Acrobats revenue.

Here’s a bunch of the best links from various blogs covering the recent release of Acrobat 9:

• Acrobat 9 Announced! New Features for the Legal Market.
• Acrobat 9: A revolutionary release.
• Acrobat 9 Knows Standards.
• Reference XObjects, PDF/X-5 and Acrobat 9.
• Preflight Audit Trails.
• Acrobat 9 JavaScript Revealed.
• See the New Adobe Acrobat 9 (FastCompany.TV).

When I first heard that Adobe were releasing a web conferencing and eLearning product, and that they were calling it Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, I thought that surely, in some way, it would just be an enhancement to the current collaboration tools available in Adobe Acrobat 8. Boy, was I wrong.

So far I have failed to find any real correlation between Adobe Acrobat (you know the one that creates PDFs and stuff) and Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (the one that does web conferencing). The only reference to PDF that I was able to find on the home page was a link to download a solution brief for Acrobat Connect Pro in PDF format.

Who knows — maybe Adobe has a master plan where all of this makes sense, or maybe they’re just abusing Adobe Acrobat’s good name to promote an unrelated product. I hope it’s the former.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is now available.

• Adobe PDF security flaw: This weeks PDF related headlines have been dominated by a recently uncovered vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat. The vulnerability was discovered by Petko Petkov, a security researcher, who seems to have a knack for discovering high profile flaws. In response, Adobe Systems have released a security advisory that provides details on how users can hack their registry to protect themselves. The vulnerability only affects machines that are using the combination of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7. Adobe will release a patch before the end of the month that fixes this security hole.
• Designing PDF forms with OpenOffice: PDF expert and author, Ted Padova, takes a look at the the PDF forms functionality in OpenOffice over at his Acrobat Users blog.
• List PDF Bookmarks with a Free Script: Acrobat for Legal Professionals has a useful post on how to easily create a list of all bookmarks in a document.
• Change PDF Versions using Acrobat: Sometimes when you submit PDF documents you need to use a specific PDF version. This article provides you with tips on how to check what version of the PDF specification a document is using and then change it.

• If you are interested in the technical side of PDF [and related technologies] then check out James King’s new blog called Inside PDF. He is the PDF Architect and a Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe — so you are definitely getting the inside word.
• PC Magazine has praised the PDF format and provided readers with reviews of four different PDF creators — Adobe Acrobat, BullZip PDF Printer, deskPDF Professional and PDF Converter Professional 4. It’s definitely not a comprehensive list (or even close) of all the PDF creators out there, so check out the comments section of the article because other readers have suggested some additional PDF creators.
• If you are lucky enough to already have an iPhone, and need to create some PDFs, then check out this new application called iPDF. It is a simple online text editor for creating and distributing PDFs.

A few interesting links that I’ve come across today:

• Rick Borstein on his Acrobat for Legal Professionals blog has attacked PDF clones as being cheap and inferior imitations of Adobe Acrobat. He obviously knows which side his bread is buttered on.
• Want to convert PDFs to Word, Excel or JPEG? Computer Tips From A Customer Guy has some.. err.. tips.
• Germany company UNIVERSE GmbH have released pdf-Office Professional in Version 7.0.

The release of Adobe Acrobat 8.1 has been announced by Lori DeFurio on her Adobe Blog. This minor release includes support for Windows Vista, Office 2007 and 64-bit Citrix and Windows environments. The update is apparently available as of today, but so far the check for updates function in my Acrobat installation hasn’t picked up anything.

There are no real surprises in this release, but there is a feature that might get some Outlook 2007 users excited. According to Lori:

“Now, when you open an email message in preview mode that has a PDF attachment – you see the PDF in the preview pane. You can view full page, or page width, and even navigate multi-page files.”

Cool.

I was amused by this comment in her post:

The 8.1 release works with Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Vista. Both PDF as a file format and Acrobat as an application are now “first class” citizens in these environments.

So the PDF file format is only a “first class” citizen of Vista, now that Adobe have got their act together, 4 months after the consumer release of Vista, and released a Vista compatible version of Acrobat 8? Tell’em they’re dreaming.

Adobe Reader 8.1 is also available as of today.