By Ron Freedom

Published: 10:00 AM EST

Track forms

If you share a form, you can determine who has completed and returned it. This could be useful for HR departments or compliance forms that require completion from a larger group.







Include Flash content in PDFs

Adobe has enhanced the support for multimedia files created in the .swf format. This is an enhancement of an existing feature in Acrobat 8.

Add comments to videos

If you use Adobe video editing products, you know that you can comment and annotate video frames using PDF annotations. Acrobat adds this capability. While it is cool, I don't see too many production houses or movie studios rushing to adopt Acrobat as a result of this enhancement, and the average user doesn't generally want to add a sticky note to a particular frame of a movie.

Create interactive presentations

Adobe has combined several pre-existing capabilities to make it easier to create multimedia presentations delivered in the PDF file format. This makes it easier to create PDF files with narration, movies, and video. But if you've ever seen the work of PDF Pictures, you'll know that most of these options can be achieved with the current version of Acrobat.

3D

Adobe has added a 3D Reviewer to combine multiple CAD formats into one PDF file for reviewing. With Acrobat 3D sales being slow, and Adobe needing to drop the price of its stand-alone Acrobat 3D product, it is no surprise to see these features added here.

View and interact with PDF maps

Adobe appears to be eying Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth. They've added the ability to search, measure, and mark up geospatially-enabled PDF maps. This feature had been available through a third party developer for a number of years, and Adobe has now built it into Acrobat.

Redaction

Acrobat 8 added redaction features that were essentially a copy of those available from third-party plug-in developer Appligent. Acrobat 9 expands these features by borrowing from InDesign, allowing it to find things like patterns of Social Security numbers and permanently remove them from a PDF file. Lawyers and courts can get this feature much less expensively by sticking with the current version of Acrobat and getting the plug-in from Appligent.



Should you upgrade?

If you are already using Acrobat 8, you'll likely find few compelling new features in Acrobat 9 to warrant an upgrade. Acrobat 9 may have been better labeled as Acrobat 8.5. It's not worthy of a full release, and lacks the type of innovation you would expect from a major revision coming from an industry leader such as Adobe.

If you are thinking about buying Acrobat 8, you'd benefit from waiting a few weeks until you can get a free upgrade to version 9. If you don't already have the professional or standard version of Acrobat, it's still a good tool to own -- but this latest upgrade really appears to fall short of its mark.

Ron Freedom is a new contributor to AppleInsider. His views and opinions are solely his and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of AppleInsider.

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