Wow that sounds ominous doesn't it... Actually I just want to direct you a an interview Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen did with University of Pennsylvania's Knowledge@Wharton a short while ago. They asked him all the important questions including how the Macromedia acquisition is going to change Adobe's future and ways Adobe will be able to use its new found control of Flash. They get into a discussion of the newly re-named engagement platform. You can either read the article at the link or download it for later listening.

via Mike Potter

Knee jerk reaction correction time... yes I did have a knee jerk reaction to what I thought would be a really cool thing. A combo Flash player and Adobe reader plugin and application would hopefully mean a possible slimmer (read more memory efficient) Reader and a more robust Player... but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Numerous corrections have been flowing out of the former Macromedia heavy-weights so I thought I should write up a quick oops post to help move us forward.

Let's look at this from another angle. Would you prefer a combo app? Maybe an Apple Preview Application mixed with the Flash player in a Flash Paper way... or how about we take some Acrobat functionality and bundle it into Actionscript. I would love to dynamically edit and create PDFs on the fly (for free... I paid a few hundred for the app already, sorry Derek) then we could add a print to PDF functionality to all Flash-based apps that would mimic that great Apple print function... What do you think?

PS: sorry mike, my bad...

Looks like the merger completion brings with it another big (and not unexpected) merge:

What are Adobe's plans for Flash Player and Adobe Reader?
Our long-term plan is to develop a "universal client" by combining PDF, Flash and HTML in a single, integrated runtime. Of course, we will continue delivering the Flash Player as a small, efficient runtime for content and applications on the web, and Adobe Reader for viewing and interacting with PDF documents and forms. The integration of these technologies into a unified framework creates a ubiquitous platform that runs on virtually every device, and dramatically expands the opportunities to create compelling solutions.

I guess Flash Paper is just a vectorized Adobe Reader now. Plus SVG will soon be fully consumed by Flash. The only question I might have is... where is my PDF manipulation ActionScript?

thanks What do i know