Bill McCoy

May 01, 2008

Adobe Enhancing Flash Openness, Proliferation

Today Adobe announced with a number of partners the Open Screen Project, an initiative to increase the richness and consistency of Internet experiences across PCs and devices. As part of this initiative, we are making our Flash Player implementation free on devices - eliminating the license fees previously charged to device manufacturers. We have also made the Flash SWF and FLV video file format specifications completely open, no strings attached. This initiative provides one more motivation for adopting Flash for rich media and interactivity to take eBooks beyond static paper-like experiences and make digital content more compelling to consumers. Adobe has already worked to enable Flash content within PDF and EPUB eBooks, in our authoring tools and our Digital Editions consumer software, and we'll be further enhancing this solution over time.

Digitally representing printed content is only the first step in digital publishing's evolution. More and more, digital publications - whether downloaded or consumed online - are going to incorporate interactivity and rich media in order to deliver more value to their readers. Digital textbooks are going to integrate eLearning experiences, such as simulations and assessments. Trade books are going to incorporate value-added elements, a la DVDs, such as video interviews with authors and socially-networked play-along whodunits. Flash is already widely adopted and a de facto industry standard, and so is an obvious choice to utilize for implementing such experiences. Adobe taking steps to fully opening Flash specifications and increasing the proliferation of Flash implementations only makes this even more of a no brainer.

March 12, 2007

Microsoft to Publishers: We'll Do the Thinking For You

Not content with pandering to publishers by viciously attacking Google as a scofflaw, Microsoft is also insulting their intelligence by promoting Microsoft-proprietary Windows-Vista-centric solutions for digital publishing. New evidence just in of their unilateralist intentions: Microsoft has officially resigned their membership in the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).

So what's Microsoft's beef with publishers and vendors coming together to establish open interoperable standards, unencumbered by patent minefields? Well, in the same AAP speech that attacked Google. Thomas Rubin dropped some hints (emphasis added):

We’ve also invested heavily in making the online reading experience richer and more engaging. One of my favorite examples is the collaboration between Microsoft and The New York Times to create the Times Reader. Times Reader is a technology that combines the readability and portability of the printed New York Times newspaper – the hardcopy, if you will – with the interactivity and immediacy of the Web ... Several other news publishers, including Associated Newspapers, Forbes, and the Hearst Corporation, have recently begun rolling out similar digital reader applications based on Microsoft technologies, and the results are very impressive. Another innovation that’s a personal favorite of mine is the British Library’s “Turning The Pages 2.0” technology. It was recently launched in late January and is built on Microsoft’s .NET 3.0 engine which is integrated into Windows Vista...

Since Microsoft has obviously set out on a path to unilaterally establish a digital publishing platform tied to their monopoly OS platform, why should they support open standards and an inclusive process that involves publishers as more than just passive recipients of the latest Microsoft technologies?

I'm a big fan of engaging experiences and liberating digital reading from browser and online-only limitations. But, doing this in a Windows-centric way is playing along with Microsoft's monopolistic strategy. No criticism of the early adopting publishers intended: newspapers are in a fight for their lives and justifiably experimenting like mad to find a formula that works. But as this gets beyond the stage of experimentation, publishers should be looking for open standards that work across PC operating systems and devices, and that don't create vendor lock-in.

And I trust that Microsoft will eventually revisit their strategy. Publishing is not the music business and an iTunes-esque single-vendor-lock-in approach is simply not going to be successful. The publishing community demands open, interoperable standards and while collaborative standards development can be painful, it is a necessary process. And the IDPF has been moving fast, with OCF (single-file container format) approved and OPS (a major revision to the XHTML-based OEBPS standard) nearing completion. Microsoft hasn't actively participated in IDPF in several years but they are always welcome back. Hopefully they'll be ready to share toys and play nice.

January 29, 2007

PDF slated to become ISO standard, "all inclusive"

Adobe announced today thatwe are working with AIIM to ensure that the complete PDF 1.7 specification (the latest format version utilized by Acrobat and Reader 8) becomes a full de jure standard. Subsets of PDF have already become full open standards, including ISO-standard PDF/A which encompasses the most widely utilzed PDF capabilities, but this marks that first time that we have agreed to submit the full language specification for official standardization, and as well per Adobe comments in this PDFZone article indicated an intention to work within a standards group, rather than unilaterally, as we enhance PDF in the future.

It's been clear for some time that it's "game over" with respect to standardization of final-form paginated content. PDF is so well entrenched, and is already used in so many contexts that have nothing to do with Adobe, and there is simply no rational reason to reinvent the wheel. Along with our Mars initiative to create an XML-friendly serialization of the PDF file format, this incremental step towards official standardization should cement PDF's role as a global core information format.

The evolution towards having a neutral organization driving standardization of PDF is in part a reflection of the maturing IT standards environment. Adobe is taking a collaborative community-based approach in many other areas, such as our work within the IDPF on OPS (Open Publication Structure), which we expect to play a complementary role to PDF for digital distribution of reflow-centric text-based content.