Flash ahead
Macromedia has attempted to address some of the problems of misapplied PDF with its new FlashPaper product, available through the company's Contribute application for light-duty Web publishing. Web publishers can use FlashPaper to convert any document into a Flash file that can be displayed in and printed from a browser window. The results are more attractive and useful than documents in straight HTML and faster than those in PDF.
"We know the experience of clicking on a link to a Word document or a PDF and waiting for that document to open up...is not really what people are looking for," said Erik Larson, senior product manager for Macromedia. "If I see the little PDF icon, I'm generally reluctant to click on that document, because I don't know how long it's going to take to open."
Unlike PDF files, FlashPaper documents can't be saved or passed around by email, making them appropriate only for Web viewing, right now. Larson said he expects many Web documents will be offered both in FlashPaper for online viewing and in PDF for distribution.
Adobe's Meyers said FlashPaper's functionality is similar to that of Acrobat six or seven years ago. "It's an interesting piece of technology, but quite limited," he said. "You can view things, you can print, and that's where it stops."
FlashPaper does offer some advantages for Web viewing, however -- an area Adobe is working on. "What we take as a challenge for the future is that FlashPaper does come up pretty rapidly in your browser," Meyers said. "That's probably the biggest plus, and that's something we take into account for development of future products."
The Yankee Group's Lancaster said that while the Autodesk and Macromedia efforts may nibble away at the fringes of Adobe's Acrobat business, along with low-end PDF publishing tools from third-party software makers, there's no reason for alarm at Adobe.
"They're focused on moving ahead with the technology, not on the folks who are chasing them," Lancaster said. "There's so much potential for using PDF functionality in the enterprise...that's where they're focusing."
