Adobe Moves Closer to Online Office Suite with Presentations, Spreadsheets, Premium Plans for Businesses

Long-time readers of Lifehack know of my ongoing beloved affair with Adobe'south online word processor Buzzword, since last year role of the Acrobat.com suite of online applications. "Love affair" is not also strong a phrase, either – I like the interface and ease of use so much that I was inspired to write a book, Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College, merely for an alibi to accept something to apply Buzzword for.

Last year, Adobe integrated Buzzword into Acrobat.com, adding online file storage and sharing, an online meeting space, and a file-to-PDF convertor, all accessible either through the website or through a very slick AIR application that runs on your desktop.

I've been waiting for Adobe to take the next step with Acrobat.com past adding spreadsheets and presentations, and at present they have. As Acrobat.com comes out of Beta, an online presentation editor and spreadsheet has been launched in Adobe's Acrobat Labs.

Adobe has likewise announced premium plans for businesses, offering unlimited PDF conversion for their Premium Plus subscribers and 10 conversions a month for Premium Basic users (free users are limited to 5files per month), the ability to host larger meetings using ConnectNow (upwardly to 20 for Premium Plus, 5 for Premium Basic users, and 3 for free users), and an unspecified (as far as I could find) increment in ability to shop and share files. The rates are a footling steep: $15 a month for Premium Bones and $35/month for Premium Plus – I call back we have to presume that more than features will exist available down the line for business organisation users.

Presentations and Tables

I won't exist upgrading to a Premium plan, since I'm just a guy, y'all know? I will be looking rather closely at the spreadsheet and presentation editors, though – that'southward something I tin utilise! Currently I use SlideRocket for presentations, and was hoping that Adobe would existence something like SlideRocket's very Adobe-esque interface to the Acrobat.com suite, and from first impressions, information technology looks like they have. It'southward quite like to Buzzword's interface, as is Table's (Adobe's name for the spreadsheet editor), and since that interface is a big role of my love for Buzzword, I recall I'chiliad going to like this. A lot.

Tables incorporates a agglomeration of automated features – for example, columns automatically inherit the data format of the first prison cell entered. Take that,Excel! Amend yet, it offers peachy collaboration features. Several people tin work on a spreadsheet at the same time, with indicators showing you which cells other people are working on at any given time. If you need to sort or alter a table, you tin can enter "Private View" so that your changes won't be reflected in the table others are working on.

Unfortunately, tables isn't exactly a spreadsheet – notwithstanding, I hope. Information technology's an easy way to present and organize information, only at that place is no mode to add formulas or automate functions. Merely it's a not bad table editor – hopefully spreadsheet functions will be added before long, and it would be overnice to come across the table editor equally it stands incorporated into Buzzword, besides.

Presentations is a little more refined, with a practiced set of tools and themes for producing quality presentations. Unfortunately, you tin't export to PowerPoint, but to PDF. Even so, the congenital-in presentation mode is pretty slick, and you can share the presentation online with anyone via email. Collaboration is slick, as in Tables – several people can work at the same time with suitable safeguards to prevent conflicts.

With Photoshop Express, Adobe is creating a pretty overnice suite of online apps. They are past far the nicest-looking and well-nigh pleasant to utilize of the recent ingather of Spider web-based apps. I'm still waiting for Buzzword to add support for styles so it tin be fully compatible with Word, and for all the Acrobat.com apps to be integrated with the Acrobat.com file storage and sharing repository – information technology's simply odd that documents created with Buzzword are saved separately from all the documents you've uploaded, or that documents you've uploaded tin can't be opened in Buzzword.

But all in all, Adobe is putting out top-notch apps and deserves a lot more attention than they're getting so far. Endeavour out this latest crop of applications and come across what you think!

carpentersequal.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/adobe-moves-closer-to-online-office-suite-with-presentations-spreadsheets-premium-plans-for-businesses.html

Share this post