Yes – Adobe Acrobat XI has just been announced with all the details… A bit ahead of the timeframe we forecast, you can learn more about and order the new product line, as well as download the free trials. For this 11th generation of the industry standard for PDF creation tools, Adobe returns to offering two versions – Standard and Pro – plus two services that now tightly integrate with the new release: EchoSign for easily enabling legally-binding electronic signatures in your documents and FormsCentral for complete end-to-end manage­ment of online forms and surveys.

The very first version of Acrobat came out in 1993 and there have been 41 million total Acrobat units sold since then, Adobe’s biggest product ever… Acrobat and PDF continue to grow, and the statistics are impressive. Today there are more than 733 million PDF files on the public Internet and this is just a small slice of PDF usage overall, since there are many more PDF files that exist inside of companies. Over 1 billion copies of the free Adobe Reader have been distrib­uted worldwide, and over 80 million copies of Reader for Mobile devices have been downloaded, remaining the top Business App in the Apple and Android Stores.

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Two weeks after its official introduction, this morning Adobe released the Acrobat XI family – the 11th generation of the world’s most popular PDF creation and reading software.

The Adobe Reader XI is out as a free download in 27 different languages, while Acrobat XI Pro and Standard are now available for purchase or (if you’d like to try the product out first on your own system) free trial download.

Celebrating its 20th birthday next year, you may wonder what new could Adobe add to this industry-standard product line to make it work better and more effectively, and enable you get your work done faster, saving time and money?  The answer is, surprisingly, a lot…

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Adobe Acrobat XI (Acrobat 11) is now shipping!  Adobe has really listened to users with this release and incorporated many new features and improvements that will make customers happy.  And continuing in our custom of providing the direct download links for major Adobe software such as CS6, Lightroom 4, and Elements 11, below you’ll find the direct links for the brand new Acrobat XI…

The links given below go to the authentic and secure files residing on Adobe’s servers, are guaranteed genuine, safe, and will not change. They are especially useful when you are unable to download these products via other means – perhaps due to issues with the Adobe Download Assistant or the Akamai Download Manager. Here the access is open and you can just use your browser, or anoth­er download manager (DLM) of your choice.

And there’s big news – after many years and customer requests, Adobe is finally making a free trial of Acrobat Pro available for Mac OS!  For Windows, the Acrobat XI download below is in the form of a single .exe file, and for Mac OS it’s a single .dmg file. There is no actual trial version of Acrobat XI Standard for any platform, but Pro includes all Standard features – so you can try out Pro for free and then decide which version you want at the time of purchase. Languages offered here are Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwe­gian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukranian.

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We’ve previously featured over 30 hours of free video tutorials for Creative Suite 6, plus four hours for Lightroom 4 – so here’s a brand new collection for the recently-released Acrobat XI Pro & Standard…

In the free courses below, Adobe’s top product experts share how to get started, the basics of the software, overviews of major new features, how to use key tools and functions, plus their favorite tips and most useful techniques. In total, there are three courses with over two hours of free content, spanning 68 separate chapters.

If you need a copy of Acrobat XI Pro to get going right away, you can just download a free 30-day trial and then jump right in:

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Adobe has made available an excellent resource that’s now updated for CS6 – a free printing handbook in the form of a 149-page downloadable e-book: The Adobe Creative Suite 6 Printing Guide. Earlier editions of this book have been out for previous releases (see the older CS5.x, CS4 and CS3 links below), but now this is fully refreshed and upgraded for the most recent versions of the products.

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One of the most frequent upgrade questions we’re seeing asked is what’s new, what’s different, or what’s changed between the new Adobe Acrobat XI (Acrobat 11) and previous versions? Or more simply put, what are the major new features in Acrobat X (Pro or Standard), versus Acrobat X or 9? Adobe calls it, “a powerful new PDF solution that rises to today’s complex document challenges,” so these kinds of answers can help decide about upgrading…

There aren’t any complete, formal reviews out yet, but here’s what some early test users are saying: “Being able to do complex things on the fly, like signing a document electron­ically or commenting on a document on an iPad, is very attractive,” and “makes it even easier and faster to create PDF forms and to auto­matically distribute and collect information with new online forms services,” plus “offers advanced document protection capabilities that are easier than ever for our staff to uniformly secure our documents.”

[ What's the difference between the editions? See: Acrobat XI Pro vs. Standard vs. Reader ]

Adobe had four overarching goals for this release: (1) increase end-user productivity, (2) streamline collab­oration, (3) lock down information security, and (4) support working with documents on mobile devices.

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[UPDATE (October 1st) – Adobe unveils new Acrobat XI, shipping soon!  Win it free.]

It’s been a while now since Acrobat X was released, and considering Adobe usually runs on two-year release schedules for this product, give or take, what does this imply for when Acrobat 11 (Pro/Standard/Reader) will be coming out?

That’s the question of the season – along with, of course, whether the next version will be dubbed “Acrobat 11″ or “Acrobat XI”…

At present there is precious little public information out there to answer these questions.  Our best estimate would be simply to go with the release dates for the past few revisions of Acrobat and then extrapolate.

Acrobat 8 came out on November 2, 2006 – Acrobat 9 arrived on June 25, 2008 – and Acrobat X began shipping on November 15th, 2010.  So a bit of basic math would project the Acrobat 11 release date to be some­time in mid to late November 2012.  Typically, Adobe would launch (or announce) the new product lineup a few weeks before that ship date.

But if you can’t wait until release day to see (and try) it, then register your interest in a possible Acrobat XI public pre-release program. There are no guarantees on being accepted if/when it opens, but it’s free and easy to sign up so it’s worth a try. The application is open for Acrobat, Adobe Reader, or both. Adobe’s goal with pre­release programs is to receive input on product usage and new features, plus learn about any early issues to help produce a tool that’s better for everyone.

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Adobe has just launched Acrobat X (Acrobat 10) and the first thing everybody wants to know is what’s been added or improved in the new version… Fortunately we’ve been following the Acrobat 10 story for a long time, so we have the answers for you…

Adobe went back to fundamentals with Acrobat X and reimplemented much of the interface and functionality to make them better, faster, and smoother. They used their extensive Product Improvement Program with a dataset of hundreds of thousands of users to make things really work like you think they should and want them to, saving you time and helping you complete your work quickly and effectively.

Here are Adobe’s overriding goals and themes for this release:

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One of the most frequent upgrade questions we’re seeing out there is what’s new, what’s different, what’s changed between Adobe Acrobat X (Acrobat 10) and previous versions? Or more simply put, what are the major new features in Acrobat X (Pro or Standard), versus Acrobat 9, 8, or even 7? Adobe calls it “the most compelling release yet” and these kinds of answers can help decide about upgrading…

Acrobat X was only announced this week, but thus far the early reviews have been very positive… PC Magazine calls it “mas­sively improved” and “faster and more powerful than ever,” with “finally a lucid, up-to-date interface” and “terrific corporate and automation features, including high-quality exports to Word and Excel documents.” Their review concludes that Acrobat X is “the most powerful, flexible, and best-designed PDF software ever written,” and “a giant step forward, and an essential upgrade for anyone who creates or manages PDFs.”

[ What's the difference between Acrobat X Standard, Pro and Suite? ]

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We’ve previously featured over 17 hours of free video tutorials for Creative Suite 5, plus three hours for Lightroom 3 – so here’s a brand new set for the recently-released Adobe Acrobat X Pro & Standard… In the free courses below, product experts share how to get started, the basics of the software, overviews of major new features, how to use key tools and functions, plus their favorite tips and most useful techniques. In total, there are three courses with 3½ hours of free content, spanning over 57 separate chapters.

If you need a copy of Acrobat X Pro to get going, you can just download a free 30-day trial.

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