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I was under a Non-disclosure agreement so couldn't say much about what I saw in Kuala Lumpur related to Acrobat 9, but the big emphasis with the next version of Acrobat (announced yesterday) is multimedia...without a doubt!

In particular, the digital ePortfolio functionality of their Acrobat Professional product is staggering...considering this is all delivered in a PDF...just writing that staggers me...I never saw PDF as a multimedia delivery platform at all.

I won't go into detail here, but instead point those interested to....

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
(let the animation load and click on "What's new")

http://www.macworld.com/article/133707/2008/06/acrobat9.html

The ability to create electronic portfolios that include animations, video and more was very impressive in the demonstrations that I saw.

At Massey we use a PowerPoint plugin on the PC that allows you to enhance PowerPoint with audio, quizzes, vide and more...and the new version allows for the integration of multiple video clips....then, get this, publish the entire thing as a PDF...yep...a PDF!! With audio, video, interaction...all in a PDF.

To see the demonstration of the functionality of Acrobat 9 was an amazing experience. It changes the whole notion of PDFs for me.

About 5 years ago I had to read a book known as the “Acrobat Bible”...around about 700 pages from memory. My lasting memory is that  came to the conclusion that most people use about 10% of the capabilities of PDF.

Let's hope that's not the case with Acrobat 9...the functionality is incredibly impressive and we'll certainly be making use of the new features.