Jun
19
PDF and Flash support – Mixed blessing
Filed Under Uncategorized
Adobe is adding support for it’s scripting technology, called Flash, into the PDF standard. Flash support provides white paper writers with an entire new palette of services to communicate.
In addition to your text product description and value proposition, you can insert dynamic Flash descriptions of your product, including animation, video, and interactive diagrams. This capability will help illustrate your product and highlight the value in your offering. I can envision a large number of uses of Flash within a PDF.
That being said, I’m tempered in my enthusiasm. I’ve seen many technologies introduced and watched them mature. In every case, the beginning of a product launch holds much thrashing before the technology matures. This ‘thrashing’ refers to the initial attempts of users to wrangle control over the technology. It takes time before the best practices start to emerge.
Remember the early days of the web? All developers thought it clever to add flashing animation, loud bells, and other annoying elements to a page. That’s thrashing. Over time, those obnoxious practices dwindled and the best practices came into the mainstream.
I suspect that we’ll start to see several PDFs incorporating Flash that distract rather than contribute to the paper. Over time, things will steady out.
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