The Adobe Acrobat PDF format has been wildly successful because it combines all the convenience of an electronic document with the familiarity of a paper printout. The latest version of Acrobat adds a host of new features that make PDFs more secure, easier to re-purpose, and more suitable for workgroup collaboration.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
Viewing a PDF file within a Web browser is nothing new. But with Acrobat 5.0, all of the annotation and mark-up tools are available in the browser window. In addition, Acrobat 5.0 can point to a data repository (such as a WebDAV server, an ODBC database, or a shared network folder) where members of a workgroup can upload and download their comments. Acrobat merges the Internet-based PDF file (which itself is never altered) with the annotations to display the work in progress. In our testing, which took advantage of a shared network folder, Acrobat performed flawlessly and allowed us to review and comment on a PDF document in a true collaborative environment.
If you disseminate sensitive information via PDF, you'll love Acrobat's new security features, which include 128-bit encryption and increased granularity for setting printing, editing, and annotation privileges. For example, you, as the author, can allow a reader to annotate but not change a file's content. The enhancements surrounding digital signatures are especially impressive. The ability to share public keys with colleagues via email from within Acrobat is a welcome convenience. More substantially, you can now use a public key to encrypt PDFs for specific persons, in effect making those documents "for their eyes only." You can even use public keys to assign different editing privileges for each recipient on your distribution list.
4%
2%
