So Adobe's done it. Having worked for well over a decade to make its PDF file format ubiquitous, it's finally made it as an ISO standard for electronic documents. Almost in celebration, Adobe has released version 9 of Acrobat, its dedicated PDF document creator, in three versions. We're looking at the top of the range Pro Extended version here, but will mention Standard and Pro in passing.

Things you can take as read in Acrobat 9 are the ability to create electronic documents and forms from just about any Windows application (Mac and Unix versions of Acrobat are available too). They can be editable or locked and can include pictures, videos and 3D objects. The free Adobe Reader can be downloaded and used to view all these features in any PDF file.

The three major new features in version 9 are integrated Flash animation support, PDF Portfolios, which enables a wide variety of document types to be included in a PDF document, and group working capabilities, where several people can view and work on a PDF document together. With the portfolio compiler open in Acrobat, you simply drag and drop the files you want included within it and you can present them as a matrix or as a fancy rotating or sliding selection.

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You've been able to include Flash SWF files in PDF documents before, but that relied on the receiver of the document having a Flash player installed. Now Flash is integrated in Adobe Reader, so animations and videos play directly. Acrobat 9 can convert from AVI, MOV and other common video formats.

In fact, it's good at doing all kinds of conversions, including OCR from scanners, and can act as a central conversion and creation tool. This idea is supported by Adobe's new PDF Portfolio. You can gather documents together into one PDF file, even though they come from a variety of sources, and give them a smart, branded front-end, which looks a lot more professional than bundling them all up in a Zip archive.

The Extended Pro version of Acrobat also includes Adobe Presenter, formerly Macromedia Breeze Presenter, which is a plug-in for PowerPoint. It enables you to add commentary, videos and quizzes and to save entire presentations as Flash movies. Working in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, you can therefore encapsulate a fully animated PowerPoint presentation in a PDF document.

Adobe prices Acrobat 9 Pro Extended at $699 in the US, so you'd think it would be around £350 in the UK. Oh, you naïve things: the cheapest we could find the full (not upgrade) version for was £695 including VAT, damn nearly twice the price and a scandal.

The new features in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended turn the program from a largely static document creator into one which creates fully animated, multi-format media from many sources. You certainly pay through the nose for it, though. Adobe needs to address the US-to-UK price differential urgently: until then, we suggest you buy from the States and live with the spelling differences.