Frequently Asked Questions: FileOpen and Adobe Acrobat 8Frequently Asked Questions: FileOpen and Adobe Acrobat 8
November 3, 2006
When is Adobe Acrobat 8/Adobe Reader 8 going to be released?
Are all FileOpen products compatible with Adobe Acrobat 8?
Are FileOpen products still compatible with older versions of Acrobat?
Which version of Adobe Acrobat 8 can I use with FileOpen products (Professional/Standard/Elements/3D)?
What version of Adobe Reader do my end-users need to open FileOpen-protected PDFs?
I already use FileOpen software to secure my PDFs. Will my users need to install a new FileOpen plug-in to open PDFs in Adobe Reader 8?
Will there be an upgrade charge to existing FileOpen customers for Acrobat 8-compatible software?
What do FileOpen products offer over the new security features in Adobe Acrobat 8?
How do FileOpen products compare with the recently announced Adobe Digital Editions Protection Service?
Adobe Acrobat 8 and Reader 8 are expected to be available around November 10, 2006.
All current versions of FileOpen products are compatible with Acrobat 8. The FileOpen client plug-in (fileopen.api) used by FileOpen Publisher3 and WebPublisher 3 has been tested against the beta releases of Acrobat and Reader 8 and works properly.
Legacy versions of the authoring component of FileOpen Publisher (v. 2x) may not work with Acrobat 8, as those versions have been replaced by Publisher3.
The same plug-in that loads in Acrobat/Reader 8 will also work version 4 or later of Acrobat/Reader on Windows. Because of changes in the compilation method required by Adobe, previous clients for Macintosh will not be forward-compatible, and a new plug-in will be required.
The FileOpen client will work with any of the above products. But the full version of Acrobat is not required: in the current FileOpen products the encryption of files is no longer performed from within Acrobat.
On Windows, users must have Acrobat/Reader 4 or later. On Macintosh, Acrobat/Reader 5.1 or later. On Linux, version 7 or later.
No, they may transfer any existing plug-in to the Acrobat 8 viewer.
No upgrade is necessary, so no charge.
Adobe Acrobat 8 continues to offer standard password security (for an explanation of standard security and its limitations, please see our whitepaper, 10 Questions to Ask Any Vendor of DRM Security Software for PDF). Adobe Acrobat 8 does not provide DRM or access controls such as expiration, limited printing, among other features of FileOpen products, except through the Policy Server plug-in and associated server tools, which may be licensed separately from Adobe.
Adobe Digital Editions is a new file format from Adobe, which displays PDF, Flash, and XHTML. The new format requires a new 3MB Digital Editions viewer, and is designed primarily as an eBook reader. Adobe will be offering a paid hosted service to apply DRM controls to files in the Digital Editions format, based on Adobe PolicyServer. Files encrypted by the now-discontinued Adobe Content Server may be opened in the Digital Editions viewer.
Files encrypted by FileOpen require the existing Adobe Reader, versions 4 through 8, which are already resident on most user desktops. FileOpen products continue to be based on the open PDF standard, with the goal of supporting both current and legacy versions of the free Adobe Reader. This enables publishers to distribute their protected PDFs to users without incurring technical support problems due to lack of backward compatibility.
Home