In 1993 Adobe Systems created a file format known as Portable Document Format (PDF). This format is used to represent two dimensional documents including the text, fonts, images and 2D vector graphics that are found in the document. The biggest advantage to the use of this file format is that it is entirely device and dispay resolution independent. PDF is an open standard but is now being prepared for and application to become and ISO standard.
Adobe Acrobat is a bundle of application software that has been developed by Adobe Systems to work with their PDF file format. Some of the software in their family is commercial and costs money, but others can be downloaded free of charge. Adobe Reader is one of the programs that can be downloaded for free. This application allows the viewing and printing of PDF files. Adobe Reader is a very large part of the Adobe Engagement Platform and is used to present information in a fixed layout that would be similar to a paper document.
In the early 1990s, there were several different companies that were competing with Adobe Acrobat, each of whom had their own document format. However, by the late 1990s, the PDF format became the standard used by most. This has created even more competitors for Adobe Acrobat and Reader, both free and commercial.
Now there are many different third party programs that can create or modify PDF files such as Nitro PDF. Adobe has also allowed developers to to create Adobe plug-ins that allow additional functions with the Acrobat program.
There are some criticisms that have arrised with the Adobe Reader program however. In newer versions of Adobe Reader, JavaScript support has been included so that a document creater may insert code that is executed when the document is read. Because of this, there have been some vunerabilities in Adobe Reader that allows malicious code to be distributed through Adobe Reader. To address this issue, in the most current versions Adobe has included the option to disable the JavaScript support using the preferences menu and embedded web addresses that are clicked on also generate a security warning dialog so that the user can determine whether they would like to allow or block the website from loading.
Adobe Reader has also received some criticism from people who feel the program is too slow to use. Adobe has been working to correct this issue with workarounds so that the program can load and be used more quickly. They have successfully made some improvements and with the release of Adobe Reader 7, Adobe claims that users can “open and save PDF files faster than ever” since version 7.0 loads “up to 50% faster than version 6.0”.
Adobe has also refused to support older versions of their software under Windows Vista. Because of this, anyone who purchases a new Windows Vista computer must use Adobe PDF tools, downgrade to Windows XP or pay and upgrade fee to Adobe so that they can run version 8 in order to continue using Adobe products.
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