To portfolio...or not to portfolio

Portfolios do indeed require Reader 9 or above, and that's never going to change as they use Flash to make the navigators work. Neither previous versions of Reader nor PDF software from other vendors, has the embedded Flash Player code required, so in those applications the portfolio will open as a regular PDF with attachments (or a PDF collection, depending on the support thereof). This means the documents will still get to the user, even if they arrive in without the on-screen navigation.

It's certainly true that enterprise deployments can run many months (years!) behind the times, and there's nothing we can do about that - however it's not necessarily a reason to exclude these new features. Ultimately they'll upgrade when they see a business need to, and if they're getting documents they can't open in their full interactive form, that's a business need. Remember, these users are increasingly vulnerable to security issues as the support phase ends for older software, and this also prompts them to deploy - so they often jump several versions at once. Changes to allow for compatibility (Windows 7, Office 2010) also force even the most reluctant to upgrade.

Yes, a portfolio does of course have to be distributed as a single file, so one minor change means a whole new upload, but it's all relative - you're saving time by not having to design pages on your website to index all these files, and of course the member files in a portfolio can interact with each other in a way individual documents can never do. The overall size of the portfolio isn't much more than the files inside it, so it's probably a question of how often you need to update it, compared to the time it takes to send by FTP.

Unless you're working for a client that specifically wants legacy content, I'd say that using the features in version 9 is perfectly acceptable given how long it's been available.

Thanks UVSAR, but can you elaborate on the above ?
Also, can you comment on that post I referenced regarding how hard it is to invoke an advanced search in a portfolio ? To me, that's looks like a huge boo-boo on the part of the adobe architects, no ?

Within a portfolio, hyperlinks work across member PDF documents as well as within them, so you can navigate between files seamlessly no matter where they're saved to. Having to download the entire set of documents may be a pain for someone who only wanted one small part, but it means you know they're there, and so can link between them. You can also tie together the branding and folder structure within the navigator (using page headers, etc) so the context of each document is evident to the user even if it's only an image file.

There are things you can't do (for example the API isn't too good at passing commands about between members), and building new navigators is *ahem* "challenging". Yes, advanced search within a portfolio is a problem (but then so would be running a search against a set of scattered individual files). Acrobat 9 was the first version to get the portfolio system, and Adobe couldn't predict everything the users would want - just as I expect many people are sitting in front of CS5 and wondering "why didn't they make it do XXX?". Now we've had time to play about and get feedback, things can be improved.

It's important to say that a portfolio is (both technically and figuratively) a ZIP file. It won't make your documents any better, it'll just deliver them with a nice user interface. Just as with ZIP, if those documents belong together, use it. If not, don't.

This was true, but no longer available : Nuance PDF Reader and Nuance PDF Converter Pro can manage portfolios (since version 6).

http://www.nuance.com/imaging/products/pdf-reader.asp
&
http://www.nuance.com/imaging/products/pdfconverter.asp

;-)

Nuance products do [u]not[/u] have an embedded Flash Player engine (nobody does, apart from Adobe) - they rely on the user having a standalone copy of Flash Player installed on their computer, and launches an external process to handle the SWF content (navigators and movies). As such, it has limited support through the API, and cannot deliver the same security sandbox - remember the player embedded inside Acrobat and Reader has been customized to block many potentially-harmful AS functions, but these of course remain in the standalone version as they're needed for content running on websites. We've also found that Nuance Reader 6 has significant issues recognizing the fact Flash Player is even installed.

The requirement to fork a potentially-vulnerable external application is the reason we stopped using legacy multimedia.

I've got nothing particular against Nuance or any other third-party vendor, but treat their headline marketing claims with caution, as they can hide a whole heap of small print.

Those guys did a great job !

Currently, PDF 1.7 is the ISO-32000
I guess that if Adobe wants its "Supplement to the ISO 32000 - BaseVersion 1.7 - ExtensionLevel 3" to become the PDF 1.8 ISO-version, Adobe should provide a (free) Flash player for 3rd party vendor to embed in their softwares ?

so, what about the future ?

???

I'm not disputing that it's nice to see another vendor taking up some of Adobe's ideas, but Flash Player is a closed box. The Flash language spec is available to anyone, so any application can generate FLA or SWF files, but the kernel of Flash Player must remain hidden from the general public for a plethora of reasons.

The Adobe 1.7EL3 specification introduces (among other things) the notion of a Rich Media Annotation - but the fact it's currently being used to play Flash content is not a fundamental tenet of the standard - it *could* be used to play anything, using any other technology. It's the same with 3D - you're never going to see the source code for the 3D rendering engine given away to the world, but the data stored in the PDF is open-source, so if another vendor wanted to write their own 3D engine, they can make it read the same data. If they wanted to use the RMA to store holograms, smells or the bump map for a virtual reality screen, they can do that too.

Adobe has to make money like anyone else, and they're giving millions of copies of Reader away - somehow that has to be justified by increased sales of something else, and they do that by including features that you need Adobe products to create, and by concentrating very hard on security via the PSIRT. Other vendors have different models - Nuance for example covers their free app with adverts for their paid products, and promotes based on low cost and small footprint. Nitro markets on their suite of plugins and tools, Foxit is going after the mobile sector. Nobody's right or wrong, but nobody's doing what they do for charitable purposes.

Thanks.
You increased my PDF knowledge !
;-)