Adobe - The Innovator That Showed The World Documents Can Go Digital
What is the best way to have a document being transformed into a file without losing a single bit of its real-world resolution? Adobe, being one of the pioneers of the internet age, was there to make things happen.
Ian Ng
1/1/20242 min read
Adobe Used To Live In Everyone's Computer
When you think of Adobe, what comes to mind?
In the early 2000s, the product that made them indispensable to each PC is the PDF reader. This was the case before online tools became popular.
Even in the early days of the internet, where email is involved, there were instances where you needed to make a paper document available online for the other party to receive. The exact, identical real-world copy that is.
This was where PDF readers came in.
PDF readers came at a time when there are no other solution to view real-world documents digitally.
A PDF Reader downloaded from Adobe's site to the computer gave everyone the power to view PDFs whenever they wanted to.
The PDF Advantage? It Goes Beyond The Code
To think of it, different document formats serve different purpose, and mostly are restricted to their own formats like a sandbox. Excel for example, are mostly numbers or data in tables and can only be saved in formats exclusive to Excel.
While all other document formats could only be generated digitally, PDFs make the transition between real and digital possible.
You could easily print out a PDF, in color or not, or you could make a digital PDF copy of a physical document instantly with a scanner.
Hassle-free Editing
It is absolutely possible to edit PDF documents online.
A signer is not required to be physically present to sign a PDF document. With just a simple mouse cursor, or a smartphone with just signer's hand, they could directly sign on the PDF. Or if they are not good with mouse-signing, they could just choose a signing font and type their initials on the signature block.
A New Dawn Of PDF Readers
After years of refining PDFs and redefining how we can interact with them, the Microsoft Edge in-built reader escalates the convenience of opening PDFs even further.
Having pre-installed together with Microsoft Edge, this reader comes ready for instant PDF viewing through said browser. The added value of being able to amend PDFs in real-time also helped lots of people save time editing their documents.
However, Adobe owns the advanced but necessary functions that its own reader can provide, in a paid version.
Conclusion
PDF has come a long way from its static document reader days, and now it becomes more exciting than ever to witness how PDFs can change document handling in the future.