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Adobe Digital Editions on Labs

Today, Adobe released a brand new software on the Adobe Labs site called Digital Editions. It is a "completely new way to read and manage eBooks and other digital publications".

Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) is a consumer Rich Internet Application that you use to read eBooks and other content published from print to screen. It installs using the Flash Plugins ability to push software. This is the same way the Flash Player does it's auto-updates and the way Acrobat Connect (formerly Breeze) installs it's required Screen Capture module and other software. Thanks to this, installing the ADE application is just as easy as clicking the Yes-button from a dialogue brought up by the Flash Player.

So an eBook reader you say? Isn't that what Adobe Acrobat Reader is for? You can certainly read books in Acrobat reader, but ADE is more than just a reader. It cannot do all the fancy stuff that Acrobat does like signatures and interactive Forms, but it is made especially for reading text on screen. The application has all the things you need to navigate back and forth, zoom and it will re-scale content to fit almost any screen size (think mobile in the future). ADE is a new way to distribute published media in a way that publishers will appreciate and that is a key point. This is something Macromedia could never do, but comes easy for Adobe.

With their strong position in Desktop Publishing, Adobe can push this in ways that Macromedia never could. Adobe will add this new way to publish content to the next version of all their creative tools (Q1 2007), so content should start flowing pretty fast. eBoks have been around for a long time, but it's only lately that it has started taking off again. Publishers such as Pragmatic Programmers now gets 40% of their revenue from eBooks and ADE will speed this up. It probably won't be a revolution as promised when eBooks surfaced, but it will continue at a steady pace. According to Adobe's Bill McCoy, "It's not if, not when - but how" this shall happen and Adobe think they have the answer.

To buy or download an eBook, all that is required from the end user is to click a button and the book is streamed to the user. It's that simple. The book is then downloaded and transferred to the ADE application where it is added to your library. If you want to limit the distribution, ADE has built in DRM to protect content from copycats. The books are either PDFs or eBook XML.

But what has this got to do with Flash? ADE is yet another great opportunity for Flash developers. Since the software itself is built on Flash, it can also mix in Flash files as part of the content. Just think of the possibilities. Kids books filled with sounds and games, Design and computing tutorial books that includes screen recordings, books on cooking with full multimedia capabilities so you get things right, and since this is based on Flash, it can also be turned into a multi-user/reader experience - this could change how we think about books. The current sample books are text and still images only, but expect this to change soon.

Some extra facts:
- ADE is a standalone application, but it may be possible to view eBooks directly in a browser at a later stage.
- It is based on, but not fully created with Apollo. It will eventually be turned into an Apollo application and will serve as an example of how Adobe are capable to use their own technology to build advanced web enabled applications.
- The current version is PC only, but a Mac version of Adobe Digital Editions will be available some time in Q4 of 2006.
- A Linux version is planned, but Adobe are looking for feedback from the community as to decide what Linux versions to support.
- The current version is a Beta, so it's not feature complete. Adobe wants your feedback to find bugs and improve the product before launching it to the main public.
Click here to download and play

Written by Jens C Brynildsen (October 24th 2006)