You thought Acrobat was simple? Think again.

Oh, Adobe Acrobat! Unifier of nations! In apprehension, how like a god!

But seriously, folks. I recently installed Acrobat 8 Professional as part of Adobe Creative Suite 3 (included in all CS3 versions except Web Standard). And let me tell you, I'm continually impressed at how this application fills niches you don't even realize are there - until they become critical to your work.

I remember Acrobat 1.0's original release in mid-1993. I was maintaining online Mac software libraries for eWorld and Compuserve (remember them?), and we distributed various newsletters alongside the shareware. They were in a variety of file types, from plain text (inflexible) to plain GIF graphics (non-searchable), not to mention the proprietary-format files (bloated, hard to read, non-universal). Any of those formats could have won, but Acrobat came out on top by a combination of a), merit, and b), Adobe's superior marketing power.

Acrobat solved a nagging problem well, producing documents that could contain both graphics and searchable text in a well-compressed file. Who could have imagined the features heaped upon it since then? The damn thing now has 33 preference panes, already! And each one points to truly useful options. Conferencing, distributed collaboration, character recognition ... the list is overwhelming.

My next Acrobat project: getting familiar with Acrobat 3D, which is for CAD users such as architects and animators. Stay tuned.

Check out more from Tom Geller on his website, TomGeller.com.