acrobat

A-PDF Text Extractor helps users remove text from locked PDFs that don't allow for copying and cutting. By performing its task quickly and easily, this program could rescue more than a few users.

The program's interface feels very intuitive and users should not have trouble navigating its small collection of command icons. However, a Help file is available for anyone needing a little more guidance. This program performs its difficult task of copying text from a locked PDF with amazing ease. Users simply seek out the PDF in question by navigating a standard file tree. Next they just … Read more

Adobe is taking Acrobat.com out of beta on Monday, and turning it into a business with paid user accounts. The service, which has more than 5 million registered users will retain its free version, however there are now usage limitations on certain features which can be unlocked by upgrading to one of the two new premium plans. These can be purchased on a monthly or yearly basis and cost $14.99 or $39 a month, or $149 or $390 a year respectively.

The "premium basic" plan allows for 10 PDF conversions per month, as well as up to five meeting participants though Adobe's ConnectNow tool. The "premium plus" plan dials that up to unlimited PDF conversions, and meetings with up to 20 users. Both premium plans also gain phone and Web support. In comparison, free users will only be able to convert five PDFs, and connect with two people at once in ConnectNow, which is just one less connection than users were able to have during Acrobat's beta period.

Along with the move to paid accounts, Acrobat.com is getting a new collaborative app called Tables that handles basic spreadsheets. Just like Buzzword, Adobe's online word processor, this lets multiple users work on a spreadsheet at once, as well as track revisions and roll back to earlier versions.

In a call with CNET News last week, Eric Larson, who is Adobe's director of product management and marketing for Acrobat.com, told me that Tables is not quite ready to replace Microsoft's Excel, which is why it's being rolled out in Adobe's Acrobat Labs section first. Larson did stress, however, that it will allow users to do things Excel can't, like see where other people are on the document, and provide a subtle warning when users are making a visual change that will affect others.

Little things that users are used to doing in normal software, like changing column width or sorting order, yields a small warning message that tells them to think twice if there are other people working on it at the same time. It also provides the option to switch to "private view," which lets users make edits without the changes going live to the main document. Adobe is hoping this type of work flow will cut down on the e-mail overload, and versioning problems that typical office software creates.

I gave the tool a spin over the weekend, and for basic spreadsheet tasks it's quite nice. Unlike Google Docs, which opens up to a sea of white cells, Tables opens up to just three columns and five rows which can be expanded one at a time. It's also incredibly responsive, letting you re-organize, and snap around columns and individual cells as if you were using desktop software.… Read more

Expanding its push from software toward online services, Adobe Systems on Wednesday introduced a technology for collaboratively producing and sharing online presentations.

Acrobat.com Presentations, hosted at Adobe Labs in its current, somewhat experimental state, joins Adobe's Buzzword online word processor with its ConnectNow service for screen sharing and other online meeting activities. Adobe also offers a basic online version of its Photoshop image-editing technology called Photoshop.com.

"The application includes built-in tools and layouts for adding visually appealing elements, such as pre-defined color sets, intelligent image placement and graphic tools for creating diagrams and adding effects," … Read more

With all the Internet attacks that exploit Adobe Acrobat Reader people should switch to using an alternative PDF reader, a security expert said at the RSA security conference on Tuesday.

Of the targeted attacks so far this year, more than 47 percent of them exploit holes in Acrobat Reader while six vulnerabilities have been discovered that target the program, Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of security firm F-Secure, said in a briefing with journalists.

Just last month, Adobe issued a fix for an Acrobat Reader hole that attackers had been exploiting for months, after issuing a patch for a critical … Read more

PDFVue is a new tool for both viewing and annotating PDF files. Similar to services like PDFMeNot and PDFHammer, PDFVue can open up PDF files right in your browser, forgoing the need to use desktop software. Better yet, if you've got the service's new browser extension installed, it can be set to automatically open up any PDF link you come across while browsing. This is not the fastest process since it first has to download and render the file, but if you've ever experienced hang-ups with Adobe's Acrobat Reader it's a nice step up.

So … Read more

Update at 8:45 a.m. PST: Information from security firm Symantec added.

Attackers are making the rounds and exploiting a critical security flaw in Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9.

Earlier versions of the PDF-related software are also affected by the critical security flaw, which could cause the applications to crash and potentially let an attacker gain control of a person's computer, Adobe Systems warned Thursday.

Reports also surfaced that attackers have developed an exploit and are taking advantage of the flaw, the company said.

Adobe has yet to develop an update to address the vulnerability but noted … Read more

Updated September 12 at 11:12 a.m. with comment from Adobe.

Certain URLs can cause Adobe Acrobat 9 to suffer a denial of service or crash, says a researcher.

According to an alert from the SecuriTeam mailing list, "a vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat 9 allow attackers to cause the program to crash by providing it with a malformed URL."

The alert cites a blog by researcher Jeremy Brown, who provides working exploit code. In one example, Brown uses the string "acroie:///DoS" to cause a DoS in Adobe Acrobat 9 running on Windows Vista.

A … Read more

The way software is updated on personal computers, with every company rolling their own solution to a common problem, is archaic. In the same way we look at typewriters as something Fred Flintstone used, future techies will scorn this time period for the disgracefully inadequate way patches are distributed to end users.

I'm reminded of this by the latest update to a popular program, the free Foxit Reader for Adobe Acrobat files. The update, released August 4, 2008, fixes a number of bugs. Had I known about the update last month, I would have installed it. But, I just … Read more

Adobe released on Tuesday the first Reader application to bake movies and animation into the Portable Document Format.

With Adobe Reader 9, users can play Flash movies, Shockwave animation, and other rich media content without needing to open a third-party player.

PDFs are reaching new levels of interactivity with this release. Past versions of the nearly ubiquitous and free application, by contrast, have enabled dynamic forms but served largely to open print-ready PDFs.

The update is supposed to load more quickly than version 8, addressing the gripes of many users who felt that Reader slowed down Web surfing.

Adobe has … Read more