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February 3, 2009

Use Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro to Create and Share Multimedia Experiences

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Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro PDF Portfolio Content Fusion

With Adobe Flash Player integration within the new Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro and Adobe Reader 9, PDF files can become far more than static documents and forms. PDF portfolios (which are special types of PDF files) can be created to deliver a wide range of engaging multimedia content to include music, photos, movies, Flash (SWF and FLV) content, 3D content, and much more. The interface used to experience the PDF portfolio content is a Flash-based navigator with different layouts. Steve Adler (Adobe Acrobat Specialist for Education) has a fantastic blog article explaining how to create PDF portfolios and their possible uses in K-12 and Higher Education environments. Below I have provided five PDF portfolio examples which you can download and view offline using the free Adobe Reader 9 or a trial version of Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. Examples include:

Once you have viewed these PDF portfolios, try creating one yourself using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro. You can use Steve Adler's blog article as a guide or watch a recorded webinar. Also, there are new PDF portfolio navigator layouts you can download and start using for your projects.

Posted by Patrick Koster at 2:14 PM | | Comments (1)

November 30, 2008

XFL: Bringing Designers and Developers Together Since 2008

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In a previous Adobe Education Technologies blog article we examined how to use Adobe InDesign CS4 to create a visually rich layout, add interactivity with hyperlinks, buttons, and page transitions, and then export to SWF. We were able to do all of this without using Adobe Flash Professional and Actionscript programming. The downside of this direct-to-SWF export is that there isn't an easy way to edit the SWF file should we want to further modify it.

Now, Adobe InDesign CS4 allows designers to create multi-page layouts and then export to the new XFL (XML for Flash) file format. The XFL file can be opened directly in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional preserving layout and typographic fidelity. Then developers can enhance the file with animation, interactivity, and video. Let's take a look at the workflow:

Continue reading "XFL: Bringing Designers and Developers Together Since 2008" »

Posted by Patrick Koster at 5:21 PM | | Comments (2)

November 3, 2008

The New InDesign CS4 Export to Flash is a Real Page Turner!

With each new release of Adobe Creative Suite there are features so fantastic that they warrant special mention on the Adobe Education Technologies blog. For this article I would like to focus on Adobe InDesign CS4 and its ability to quickly create and export interactive Flash (SWF) files.

In case you aren't familiar with Adobe InDesign, it is the leading page layout application enabling creative freedom along with precise control over graphics, typography, color, transparency, effects, and placed images. Though Adobe InDesign provides direct-to-print capabilities, many have used it to create PDF files which capture all design elements and can be shared and viewed with the free Adobe Reader. What has been missing was an easy way to create rich interactive content that could be viewed with the Adobe Flash Player. Click this link to view an example of what we can now build with Adobe InDesign CS4 (at 2MB it takes a few seconds to load, but is worth the wait - move your cursor over one of the page corners, click, and drag to turn the page): http://education.acrobat.com/idcs4toswf/

Let's examine how to create this Flash file!

Continue reading "The New InDesign CS4 Export to Flash is a Real Page Turner!" »

Posted by Patrick Koster at 1:49 PM | | Comments (3)