Tag Archives: acrobat

Adobe to End Support for Flash and Acrobat 8

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One thing about Adobe products is that changes come quickly.  Unfortunately, that’s due, in large part, to their ever-present security vulnerabilities.  Of course, Flash and Acrobat are the targets because of their overwhelming market share.  Hackers always gravitate to where the most potential victims are.  Adobe, for their part, has become pretty good at getting out the updates to try and stay one step ahead of trouble.  Since they pop up notifications about updates most users probably stay pretty close to current, but there are always stragglers and procrastinators.

If you aren’t keeping track, we are currently at Flash version 11 and Acrobat version X.  And, just a little while ago, Adobe announced that they will be ending support for Flash and Acrobat versions 8.  Adobe released a technote about it explaining the end-of-support process and what you can expect, but an Adobe rep summed it up with the simple “Upgrade… as quickly as possible.”

Adobe provides five years of product support, starting from the general availability date of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat. In line with this policy, support for Adobe Reader 8.x and Adobe Acrobat 8.x will end on November 3 2011.

End of Support means that Adobe no longer provides technical support or distributes runtimes. This policy affects product and security updates for all derivatives of a product or product version (localized versions, minor upgrades, operating systems, dot and double-dot releases, and connector products.)

As noted above, support will end on November 3rd, which is now less than a month away.  Most people should already have upgraded, and hopefully kept up with security updates, but if you haven’t then go do so now.  If you would like more information, you can read the entire technote.

PDF for Everyone

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There was a time, back in the technological dark ages, just a scant two or three years ago, that PDF’s could only be created by Adobe Professional. It was so fancy, so rare, and so expensive that it didn’t even need a real name, just “Adobe Professional.” To differentiate from other Adobe products, we often called it Adobe Acrobat Professional, just to denote it was different than the free Acrobat reader we all needed on our computers.

But the tide shifted when Adobe lost their tight control on the PDF production framework. Now anyone can make a PDF, for free, any time, using software that is usually already installed or easily installed as a plug-in to existing products. Microsoft Office has a save-to-PDF plugin, and so does Open Office. And now, Firefox does too. Self-publishing websites now have their own proprietary and functional PDF converters for use by authors, and if all else fails and you can find nothing else,you can go out and download a free PDF creator like PDF 995, or PDF Converter from SourceForge. Many of these freebies now come with all the bells and whistles of Adobe Acrobat Professional, including style sheets, text-to-audio creation functionality, and complete creation tools.

I played a bit today with the Firefox plugin, which is made by Nitro, and it is adequate for the task. It is easy to save off a PDF of a website, links intact, for use in presentations or just to save for archival purposes. My complaint would be it doesn’t allow me to change any settings, and it is a bit slow to create the page. The output is really good, though, so it’s not a bad tool at all.

There is no reason for anyone not to be able to produce a PDF these days, whether or not they have Adobe Acrobat Professional.