Adobe Reader 8
Welcome. My name is Steve Snell and I am a Group Product Manager for Adobe Reader® . I can't think of a better time to launch a blog than now when we announce the general availability of Adobe Reader 8 in English, French, German and Japanese for Macintosh and Windows. Once you're are done reading this, download your free copy here.
You'll notice some significant changes from previous versions of Reader. The Reader user interface has been completely reorganized, is cleaner and much more functional. Gone are the navigation and page layout controls from the bottom of the main window. These are now part of the main navigation toolbar, giving you more real estate to view and interact with PDF files within the main window. The toolbars and buttons are now better organized and under your control; customize these now as you like.
Another new feature is "Beyond Adobe Reader", a great reference for learning about using Reader as a client to other Adobe products such as Adobe Acrobat and the Adobe LiveCycle Server family. "Beyond..." launches by default when you click on the Reader shortcut or alias from your desktop (but you can also reach it from a toolbar button). You'll find find information about changes in Reader, how to get additional help and, for developers, how to extend Reader. This information will be updated every month or so check this resource often.
More new features: 2D GPU accelleration, combined find & search, integration with Acrobat Connect (plus a free trial offer!), booklet printing, new tools, shared reviews...the list goes on and on.
In future blogs, I'll provide hints on deploying Reader in large organizations using the new Adobe Customization Wizard, working with interactive forms, creating PDFs online directly from Reader, and lots more. Stay tuned...
Comments
Thanks - the new simplified UI is much better. During install I wish you wouldn't try to bundle Adobe photoshop album by default - can't you make that checkbox turned off by default?
Posted by: Patrick Fitzgerald | December 6, 2006 08:47 AM
Is there a real download link for those of us who want to deploy it? I have to do this on Mac OS X and Windows, and I'm so not playing the download installer game on hundreds of systems.
Posted by: John Welch | December 6, 2006 09:52 AM
Hmmm, the one feature I like [b]was[/b] having the nav controls at the bottom — I didn't have to move the mouse as far. Acrobat 8 Pro is also pretty great, and well worth the upgrade.
Posted by: Zaine Ridling | December 6, 2006 11:41 AM
Any idea when the Adobe Customization Wizard 8 will be released? We would like to deploy Adobe Reader 8 at my company but cannot because we cannot customize it.
Answer: The Adobe Customization Wizard will be available by the end of the year. You will be able to download from :
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/solutions/it/
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Posted by: Paul Newton | December 13, 2006 08:57 AM
Great! so when will we see it for Linux? The day I upgraded from reader 5 to 7 on my office machine, my job became much more pleasant. Please keep up the good work, and don't forget about us!
Answer: Thanks for the comment. We're committed to the Linux platform and plan to release a new Reader for Linux later this year.
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Posted by: Derek Schuff | January 5, 2007 02:14 PM
Congratulations on the launch of Reader 8!
I was wondering, though, whether there are any plans to support using Reader's web browser plug-in in Gecko-based browsers (specifically Firefox) on Intel-based Macs.
Answer: Eddie, thanks for the post. We can't comment on future versions of products but I'll take this as a feature request.
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Posted by: Eddie Kay | January 24, 2007 08:20 AM
Everyone at our compmay is very impressed by reader 8. We would like to roll it out on our computer images.
Currently we have a substantial amount of users using Acrobat pro version 6 & 7. Is there any way to integrate reader 8 into the acrobat suite 6 & 7? I am hoping users can install Acrobat 6 or 7 onto a pc with reader 8 installed, allowing the users to open PDF in reader 8 & edit them, is that possible?
Answer: We support using Reader 8 on the same desktop as Acrobat. The Reader installer detects whether a copy of Acrobat already exists and if so asks the user which application should open PDF file. There is not a way to integrate Acrobat and Reader (any version) in the way you describe but using both concurrently might solve your problem.
Posted by: Glen McArdle | February 12, 2007 04:37 PM