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June 05, 2007
ANNOUNCEMENT: Acrobat 8.1 available today
As of today, an update to Acrobat 8, upgrading Acrobat 8 to Acrobat 8.1 (Professional & Standard) is available via Adobe Updater (in Acrobat). A download on Adobe.com will be available later this month (I'll update you when it is live)
The 8.1 release works with Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Vista. Both PDF as a file format and Acrobat as an application are now "first class" citizens in these environments.
In Office 2007 - we are conforming to the new ribbon UI and are fully integrated. (Figure 1)
Figure 1. Acrobat Ribbon in Microsoft Word 2007
In MSFT Vista - PDF will preview similar to other supported file formats, and of course, you can create PDF by simply right clicking on supported file formats (Word, Excel, PPT, JPG, etc.) (Figure 2)
Figure 2. Right-click on any supported application in Microsoft Vista to create Adobe PDF.
My favorite integration with Office 2007 is with Outlook 2007. Now, when you open an email message in preview mode that has a PDF attachment – you see the PDF in the preview pane. You can view full page, or page width, and even navigate multi-page files. (Figure 3)
Figure 3. PDF Preview in Outlook 2007.
Also - at the request of our customer base, we're supporting 64-bit Citrix and Windows environments. Acrobat is still a 32-bit application, but for folks running 64-bit Citrix environments, or who load Acrobat on a 64-bit Windows system, Acrobat will work as advertised.
For additional information, I recommend you review http://www.adobe.com/acrobat and http://www.acrobatusers.com/ for articles and tips from our contributors on the updates in Acrobat 8.1.
Adobe Reader 8.1 is also available today.
Comments
Any improvements on the Mac side?
It's not there yet in Updates as of 6:20 AM Pacific time.
Lori:
This update sounds like it is even better than what I was expecting! Really happy to see that Acrobat now supports Vista 64-bit - not having it available really had me scrambling.
Congratulations to you and the team for getting this out.
The downloads are now available on Adobe.com:
Windows - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3661
Mac - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3662
Also - there is a tech note.
I jumped the gun yesterday. I posted before the updater was working 100% around the world. As of now, both the Mac and Win updaters are working as advertised and as I mentioned the downloads are also posted.
On the Mac side....
I'm very happy to announce that Flash (SWF) will now play in Acrobat (and Reader) without using QuickTime player. We've added support for Bridgetalk 2 (used in CS3) with InDesign, and a bunch of bugs were fixed as well.
The Adobe Updater didn't work. Got an error. But the provided here did work.
What were the bugs that were fixed? I am a bit disapointed that some of my plug-ins still don't work smoothly.
I really like Acrobat 8. Thanks for the update.
Blue Screen Crash.
I have tried to add the update twice and each time it managed to have a fatal error and then go to blue screen when I am in reboot. I have completely uninstalled. NOw I am uninstalling again, and then NOT doing the update. At least for now.
Now all you have to do is start packaging Acrobat Mac in a way that doesn't make sysadmins hate you.
Seriously, installing Acrobat on more than 1-3 machines is just too friggin' painful.
This update fixes a problem when inserts some files .swf, especially if has buttons or interactive menus.
Additional Acrobat 8.1 updates are now posted on Adobe.com
For European and Latin American languages (Italian, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Brazilian Portuguese):
Windows version
Macintosh version
For Asian languages (Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese, and Korean):
Windows version
Macintosh version
If you need details about what is in the release - please see the technical note.
can Acrobat 7.0.9 profession be upgrades to Acrobat 8.0 professional.
Acrobat 7.0.9 can be upgraded to Acrobat 8, and then you can add the update to get to 8.1. You can buy the upgrade from your local reseller, or via Adobe.com - http://www.adobe.com/store. If you upgrade Acrobat 5 or AcrobatPro (6,7) or Std (6,7) to Pro (8) the price is $159 US.
Per Steven Dayton — 11:38 AM on June 06, 2007
"What were the bugs that were fixed? I am a bit disapointed that some of my plug-ins still don't work smoothly."
I ran the 8.1 update on windows, now Acrobat crashes each time it trys to load many different plugin. I had to uninstall most of them. Then only ones that work are third party ones like FusionProAcro8.api. checkers.api editors.api... caused Acrobat to crash.
-- Bob V.
It is worth noting that the "Fully functional PDF" and "Quick and simple PDF" radio buttons do not appear for those users running Acrobat 8.1 under Vista when they attempt to save Word documents as PDFs. Similarly, the "View result" checkbox is not available to these individuals.
Let's hope that Adobe is quick to release a bugfix to these serious functionality deficits...
Erstwhile - this just isn't the case. I've attached a screen shot of Acrobat 8.1 running on Microsoft Vista with Microsoft Word 2007. Both the options (Fully Functional and Quick and Simple) are there along with the View Results check box. If you are having problems with Acrobat 8.1 on Vista - please give a call to Adobe Technical Support.
Bob V.
It is up to the plug-in vendors to test their solutions with Acrobat updates and then patch or redistribute as necessary. We had a very extensive beta program that was open to developers long before users were invited. I suggest you contact the 3rd party plug-in vendors to determine when they plan to update their technology to work with Acrobat 8.