Great! But for me as a lay reader, the one thing that strikes a discordant note when I am using the free Adobe Reader X is the absence of a bookmarking feature. Just how the heck am I supposed to start from where I left off reading a 1000 page ebook?

Why Adobe would nix out such a basic feature is beyond me, but that forced me to look for solutions as a workaround.

The Easy Way to Remember a Page in Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader does not let you create and place new bookmarks, but there’s one little setting you can apply that will help the software remember the last page that was opened by the PDF reader. It is ‘technically’ not a bookmark, but it’s a handy workaround that takes just a checkmark. Follow the steps below to enable the native feature.

1. In Adobe Reader, go to Edit – Preferences (or CTRL + K).

2. Click on Documents under the listed categories on the left.

3. As shown in the screenshot, enable the feature that says – Restore last view settings when reopening document. Click OK and exit.

Now, open any number of PDF documents; Adobe Reader remembers the page you left it at. This may not be a bookmarking solution, may not give you the option to mark out multiple points in a book, but is a simple elegant answer to our basic requirement when we open up an ebook in a PDF reader.

JavaScript Has the Answer

Call this a plug-in or an Adobe back, but it is the only solution I could find to deliberately introduce a bookmarking feature in Adobe Reader. The small 5KB JavaScript file is packaged in a downloadable ZIP file at PDF Hacks.

1. Download and unzip the small file. Copy it into your Acrobat Reader JavaScript’s directory. In my Win XP machine it is located at – C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 10.0\Reader\Javascripts.

2. Open any PDF file with Adobe Acrobat Reader and open the View menu. Four new items are clearly visible under the menu – Bookmark this page, Go to bookmark, Remove bookmark and Clear bookmarks. The numbers (5,6) next to the top two options refers to the keyboard shortcut keys.

3. The functions are pretty much self-explanatory. From the page you want to bookmark, click on Bookmark this page. The following box opens up and you can assign a name to the bookmark.

4. Clicking on Go to bookmark opens up a floating box and a click on each takes you to each successive bookmark you have set. You can bookmark as many numbers of pages as you want.

5. Remove bookmark allows you to remove a single bookmark and Clear bookmarks wipes out all the bookmarks in one go.

Note: For some PDF files, the hack works smoothly. In others, you might get an internal error notification. Right click on a page in the PDF file and click on Page Display Preferences. Under JavaScript, make sure the boxes on the right are checked as in the following screen.

Inspite of the larger memory footprint of Adobe Reader in comparison to other (free) alternatives, there are some benefits like better rendering of PDF documents. The new Sandbox feature has also improved security. But the missing feature of user-bookmarking is an irritant when it comes to readers like you and me. These two simple, no hassle solutions allow us to use Adobe Reader and enjoy a few of its merits.

Do you know of any other way to bookmark ebooks in Adobe Reader? Did these two tips solve your PDF bookmarking issues? Let us know.

A few weeks ago, I decided to do something wild and crazy:

Buy Adobe Creative Suite 5.5. I already own a legal boxed copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3, so how hard can an upgrade be, right? I went over to the Adobe website, to be greeted with this encouraging message:

That’s great, right? 20% savings! After telling Adobe I own a copy of CS3 Design Standard, I got an upgrade price of $699 for Design Standard (not Premium, mind you). That’s a lot of money, but I decided to bite the bullet and buy it anyway. That was when surprising things started happening.

What I Would Expect (Sane Pricing Policies)

Above you can see a screenshot of Steam, one of the main ways to buy downloadable PC software today. Sure, it’s games, but my point is that you see a price, you click, you pay, and you get your download. Pretty simple, right? The Android Market makes this even simpler by converting prices to your own currency. I could find numerous other examples of organizations selling software like this, because this is how software is being sold these days.

So, since I am purchasing a downloadable product, I was expecting to pay for it, get a link and a key, and be on my merry way. Sure, $699 is a lot of money, but that’s the price so I guess I just need to cough up the money.

What Actually Happened

Just before checkout, the promised 20% discount was applied, and the price dropped to $559.20:

And then… I clicked Checkout.

What’s that? An error? That’s odd – I didn’t even get a chance to enter my credit card information. Perplexed, I called the number shown above and explain I was trying to buy Adobe CS 5.5 with a valid international credit card.

Adobe’s rep told me that she’s very sorry, but I simply cannot buy CS 5.5 via the website. I must have an American billing address, or else they can’t sell me the product. Country-based limitations are nothing new; Amazon’s Android App Store only works within the US, for example. Hulu and Netflix are also geographically limited. But what’s different in this case is that the product I am trying to buy is available for sale in my territory, by the very same company, Adobe, who keeps offices in Israel (my territory). They just won’t sell it to me via the website.

If this was where the story ended, it would just be an example of corporate inefficiency. Can’t buy it on the site, big deal. But wait, the plot thickens.

Once I realized my only option would be buying the application locally, I had to work with Adobe’s network of local distributors (Adobe would not sell directly to me, a lowly customer). I had to email each of them separately and wait for quotes. After a few days, the quotes started flowing in, and were around the $800 mark for an upgrade from CS 3 to CS 5.5. Adobe sells a separate Middle Eastern version, but I asked specifically for the English version, so the price difference is not because of any difference in the product.

One distributor went so far as to tell me that I would have to wait two weeks after paying, because Adobe does not allow them to hold upgrade boxes in stock. And this is for a product that is available for download from Adobe’s official site, and which I didn’t even want boxed in the first place.

So an Adobe product that costs $559 in the US costs around $800 in Israel, a country where the standard of living and the GDP are by no means higher than in the US. And you can’t download it, but must buy it boxed. And you might have to wait two weeks before you get it.

Interesting, right?

An International Situation

At first, I thought Adobe must have something against Israel (it happens). But then I started searching online, and started finding articles like this one (shown above, PC Pro), this one (from The Next Web), as well as forum posts discussing Adobe’s pricing policy. Take Adobe CS 5.5 Master Collection, for example. This item costs $2,599 in the US. If you buy it in the UK, you would have to shell out £2,268, not including the 20% VAT. That is $3,499 pre-VAT – a $900 difference!

It turns out Adobe has an intentionally discriminatory international pricing policy. If you are outside of the US, you will often have to pay much more for the same exact bits and bytes a US customer gets.

PC Pro put it best when they said: This isn’t just a question of best business practice. Adobe’s whole cross-platform design vision is built on the principle of a universal and level playing field. The same can’t be said of its pricing policy and it needs to be changed.

Adobe’s Official Response

I wrote Adobe’s Senior Channel Manager Israel, Mr. Avi Zrihan, to ask what gives. It took him three working days to reply, but he finally got back to me with the following boilerplate:

We establish our prices for Creative Suite products on a regional basis using a consistent methodology. Local market conditions significantly influence our pricing.

Local market conditions include: the costs of doing business in different regions and customer research that assesses the value of the product in the local market.

The cost of doing business in EMEA is significantly higher per unit of revenue earned than it is in North America. For example, in a large homogenous market like North America, we can achieve certain economies of scale that affect pricing. Outside the US, by contrast, we must support diverse regional market situations with 2 major currencies, and 15 major languages—which results in higher costs.

That’s very interesting. How come other companies (Microsoft, Corel, and others) can support the same “diverse regional market” without hiking up the price by a crazy margin?

Another part of corporate newspeak that I like: “The cost […] is significantly higher per unit of revenue earned”. In other words, not as many people buy Adobe’s products in this market. Gee, I wonder why!

Bottom Line

Adobe’s pricing policies seem to be as creative as their products. Their inventive regional pricing and bizarre practices leave users with two choices: Pay a crazy markup for the same product, or be a “pirate”. Or am I reading this the wrong way? Let me know below.

Buyers of the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus have found that there’s no Adobe Flash Player installed by default, and none available through the Android Market. Google has confirmed, saying “Flash hasn’t been released for ICS yet. So far as we know, Adobe will support Flash for ICS.”

Adobe recently announced a halt to development of the mobile plugin. It’s one thing to simply hear an announcement, however – it’s another to see it take effect. The fact that a Flash Player was not launched at the release of ICS is proof Adobe isn’t kidding around about abandoning mobile. When ICS does receive a Flash player, it will almost certainly be a simple port of the current 11.1 release and nothing more.

While the lack of Flash might bewilder some potential consumers, don’t let this stop you from buying a new Android ICS phone. After all, the competition never supported it to begin with, and most mobile web content can be enjoyed without it. Now that even Adobe’s support is grinding to a halt, use of Flash for mobile is on its way to becoming extinct.

Source: Slashgear

Adobe will continue releasing security updates and bug fixes for the already existing versions, but the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook will be the last official one. Others who have licensed Adobe’s code are permitted to still use it to create their own versions, which will not be supported by Adobe.

What do these changes actually mean for us? Currently, not a lot. Since bug fixes and security updates will still be released, those of us who have Flash on our mobile devices will be able to continue using it as before. The true change will happen when new devices come out without Flash support, but considering the most popular mobile device never supported it, the world will probably not change considerably.

What do you think about this move? Is this merely Adobe giving up, or are they making a wise choice?

Source: ZDnet

For this price, you get the ability not only to sync photos across devices, but to edit photos and sync those edits too and to allow others to view and edit photos as well. All edits are saved automatically to the cloud and you can access them from all your devices, along with copies of the originals.

Here’s a short video of the service’s main features:

Apple’s new Photo Stream lets you access your photos across devices, but the storage is limited to 30 days and you can’t select which photos you want to sync, you can only sync all of them. Adobe Carousel is aimed at providing a solution for those who find Photo Stream to be insufficient for their needs.

Versions for Windows and Android are planned for the future, but Adobe is not providing a definite date for those yet. What do you think about Photo Stream? Is it more than enough for photo sync, or do you think Adobe Carousel truly provides something that was missing?

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Adobe Reader doesn’t include a built-in web browser, so you must bring in PDFs from a supporting iOS web browser, an e-mail attachment, or from a file sharing service like Dropbox. Within these applications, Adobe Reader should appear as one of the supporting applications for PDFs when you tap the “Open In….” button.

Adobe Reader does support embedded annotations, drawing markups, and Sticky Notes that exists in imported PDFs, though it lacks annotation tools itself. The Reader also includes a limited search function, and a bookmarking tool. Pages can be read in continuous scroll or Single page mode, and there is a tool for quickly navigating through large files using thumbnail view. Text in PDFs can also be copied to the clipboard, but it cannot be highlighted.

As with other PDF applications, you can wirelessly print PDFs from within Adobe Reader using AirPrint. You can also share PDF files with other applications using “Open In…” as well as via an e-mail attachment.

Adobe Reader is available for free download in international languages.

Source: Addictive Tips

Before we start, I need to make sure you know exactly what Flash is and where it can be found. Flash can be found anywhere, from your YouTube player to those addictive games you play like CityVille. Even some ads (the ones that animate a lot) are displayed with Flash rather than using an image. Simply put, it’s in a lot of places, and you’ll notice it pretty quickly if you don’t have Flash or if you uninstall it. Personally, while I recognize the impact Flash has on the Web, I would rather it be replaced by HTML5. But like any other major technology shifts, people will resist at first and that will make the transition a long process.

Major Features

Native 64-bit Support

One of the major features being touted in this release is that stable 64-bit builds are available to be used. While it’s strange that Adobe, who have plenty of popular products, never really touched the 64-bit world, they did so with Flash and I think it’s a step in the right direction. Although Windows users were probably fine using the 32-bit version, the availability of 64-bit builds will help everyone. Not only will those builds have slight performance increases simply from its 64-bit nature, but it will also make Linux users very happy to finally have a native 64-bit plugin instead of using plugin wrappers.

In the past, Adobe has once before tried to make Flash available to 64-bit users, but sadly that release lagged behind the official 32-bit build. Today, however, the 64-bit build is in sync with the regular plugin and is ready for mass consumption.

3D Graphics Acceleration

The next major feature is “Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering”. Simply put, this feature allows the use of GPUs to render the graphics for both 2D and 3D contexts. This is a great addition to Flash as 3D objects were somewhat slow. Instead, they should now render much more quickly and be more competitive compared to native-code 3D games. You can find some demos that use this technology here.

Even More Support

There are many other additions, such as H.264/AVC  Software Encoding for Cameras, JPEG-XR support, and support for other compression technologies. Even more so, stability and security fixes over Flash 10 are included as well to reduce the amount of crashes. The end results should be a faster, smoother, and more reliable Flash experience. Therefore, everyone should update to the new version, not only to be able to do more, but to also stay safe.

Conclusion

Flash, while I personally wish it would slowly disappear, still holds much power on the Web. With continuous improvements coming from the developers at Adobe, Flash will keep on living for quite a while as it provides some unique features that HTML5 may not yet have. Only in the course of time will we see whether Flash or HTML5 becomes the dominant technology, or whether they will be tied.

Which do you prefer, Flash or HTML5? Why do you say that? What would you like to see added to Flash or HTML5? Let us know in the comments!

The head of the new bunch is Adobe Photoshop Touch, which is a downgraded Photoshop version for tablets that includes some unique tablet optimized features. The rest of the new apps are:

• Adobe Debut – A presentation app for Adobe-created designs.
• Adobe Proto – An interactive wireframing and a prototype app.
• Adobe Collage – A creative app for combining images, drawing and text to whole concepts.
• Adobe Kuler – A color theme creator and explorer.
• Adobe Ideas – A vector drawing app.

Aside from Adobe Ideas, which has been available in the iOS AppStore for quite a while, all of these new apps will be available soon for Android, with no release date for iOS in sight. An interesting decision which might have something do with Apple’s attitude toward Flash.

Aside from the new apps, Adobe has also announced a new sharing platform by the name of Adobe Creative Cloud, which will allow users to share their creations across tablets and desktops.

What do you think of Adobe’s decision to go with Android? Is it just a coincidence or did Adobe deliberately “forget” that the world’s most popular tablet is the iPad?

Source: Adobe

For those who have better eyes for design (and no interest in coding), there’s Muse from Adobe. The company claims that this multi-platform AIR application can help anybody to design and publish HTML websites without having to write any code whatsoever.

Start Planning Your Personal Landing Page

One question before we begin. Why would anyone use a web building tool like Muse when you can use WordPress and its themes instead? The answer is “customization”. Even though there are literally thousands of WordPress themes out there, customizing the theme to really fit our needs is difficult. Another reason is that using a WordPress advanced database system for a simple and linear site would be overkill.

You can download Muse from the website. It’s available for free until the v.1.0 release in early 2012. The application works under Windows and Mac, but it requires that your system has AIR installed.

To better understand how Muse works, let’s try to use it to create a simple personal landing page, something along the lines of Flavors.me or About.me. Start by choosing “Create New Site” from the startup window or from the File menu.

• Then you will be asked to customize your site by choosing the page width, the number of columns, margins, etc.

• The first step in building a website is deciding how many pages it will have and what the relation is between the pages. You can easily add, delete, and rearrange pages in the “Plan” window.

• Click the “+ (plus)” button to add, and the “X” button to close. Click on the page name to rename, then drag and drop to rearrange.

• At the bottom of the page, you can see the A-Master page. This is the template that will be used throughout your site. So if there are elements you want to keep on all your pages, it would be so much easier if you define the elements at A-Master instead of repeating them over and over.

Start Building

• If you double click one of the pages, it will be opened in a new tab. You can start building and designing the pages using the tools at the top toolbar.

• Other tools that will help you along in the design process are the “Panels” on the right. You can show or hide these panels via the Window menu.

• To build our personal landing page, let’s change the background by inserting an image. You can customize the image by changing the scale and position.

• Next, let’s add a navigation menu by choosing it from the Widget panel, then dragging and dropping it into the webpage.

• You can customize the navigation menu using the “Options“. Click the small blue arrow to summon the Options window.

• You can also change the text appearance (type, color, size) using the “Text” tab in the right panels.

• Then you can add Texts and Rectangles using the tools on the toolbar. Drag these elements to the position that you want, and customize them via the right panels. To add external links (or other HTML elements), use the “Insert HTML” menu under “Object“.

• Write down the HTML code of the links in the pop-up window and click OK to add it to the site.

• Similar to the other elements, the inserted HTML code is highly customizable. Unfortunately, we still can’t change the link color. Hopefully this feature will appear in a future version of the app.

• After everything is set, you can see the result by clicking on the “Preview” link.

The Last Step

• After everything is set, you are ready to put your site out on the web. To do that, use the “export as HTML” menu under “File“.

• Decide on the location to save the project, and click “Export” .

• If you want to attach your personal landing page to a URL you already own, use any decent FTP client to upload everything inside the folder to your web hosting account. Since different hosting providers use different settings, please consult your hosting provider about this.

This short experiment has shown us that creating a personal landing page using Muse is as simple as adding and customizing elements. But Muse is also capable of creating more complicated sites with multiple pages. There are many examples of websites showing what Muse can do on their “Showcase” page. To learn more about Muse, you can visit their “Learn” page.

What do you think about Muse? Will you try this tool to help you build your website? Share your thoughts in the comments below.