Adobe Brings Advances in Web Graphics into the Mainstream

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For Immediate Release

Adobe Brings Advances in Web Graphics into the Mainstream

SHOWCASE '99, San Diego, Calif., (January 18, 1999) (Nasdaq: ADBE)--Adobe Systems, the leader in professional graphics software, is demonstrating a quantum leap in Web graphics technology this week. At David Coursey's exclusive Showcase '99 conference in San Diego, Adobe is presenting new advances that will be available this year to end users, Web content creators, and developers. The company is showing how popular Web applications, such as merchandising products and services, could be significantly enhanced with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a proposed open standard to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). SVG brings the rich, compelling, high-resolution graphics that users have come to expect in catalogs, magazines, and advertisements to the Web. SVG also adds dynamic and interactive dimensions to Web graphics, but they download significantly faster, freeing bandwidth and optimizing browser performance.
"Adobe's vision for the Web goes beyond delivering award-winning applications that can be deployed across various mediums. As the leading implementor of SVG, Adobe is actively involved in developing open standards that define tomorrow's online experience. The breakthrough advances of SVG place Web graphics at the center of the e-business experience," said John Warnock, CEO of Adobe Systems.
Everywhere on Any Platform
To demonstrate SVG's integration and ubiquity, Adobe will show SVG running within Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer and a "micro-viewer" technology on a range of clients--from hand-held devices to desktop computers. The micro-viewer, jointly developed by Adobe and IBM, showcases the flexibility and scalability of SVG and brings all of its benefits to lightweight hand-held devices.
Easy Implementation and Deployment
In addition, Adobe is unveiling the first implementation of an SVG plug-in within its newly acquired GoLive(TM) CyberStudio(TM) Professional Web authoring product. This demonstration reaffirms Adobe's commitment to Web-enabling all of its products and proves how quickly SVG can be deployed to produce active and compelling Web sites critical to the future of e-business. For example, as consumers flock to the Web, it will be essential to give them the ability to easily access, view and print the high-quality content that accurately represents their favorite products and services. And because SVG is open and programmable, the interactive and dynamic experiences of the Web can be heightened to a new level of immersion.
End User Benefits
In addition to faster download speeds, rich graphics and flexible, dynamic Web experiences, SVG also supplies many other end user benefits. SVG provides: high-resolution printing, high- performance zooming and panning inside of graphics without reloading, and the ability to search text within the graphic with any search engine. Plus, SVG ensures color accuracy with over 16 million colors, instead of the traditional 256--a significant benefit for Web shopping and browsing.
Web Content Creator Benefits
Vector graphics have many uses and significant advantages over the bitmap formats GIF, PNG and JPEG. Vectors are scalable, faster to download, searchable and print better than bitmaps. Also, SVG integrates with older raster formats and ensures color accuracy with ICC color profiles for successful branding.
SVG will be fully compatible with leading drawing, illustration and Web authoring programs, such as Adobe(R) Illustrator(R) and GoLive CyberStudio. This enables Web content creators to easily export vector graphics to the Web without loss of quality. In conjunction with Adobe's page layout technologies, user's can move high-quality content to the web using SVG. Now, they can deploy a cross-media publishing solution by producing the same high-quality content normally designed for print, and use SVG to post it to the Web in an acceptable file size without resorting to time-consuming, quality-reducing tricks.
The interactive and transparency characteristics of SVG enhance the Web creator's ability to create highly immersive and guided Web experiences. Every graphic component can be independently programmed, morphed or be a hyperlink. This results in the end user being able to dig deep into an SVG object to obtain more dynamic information--a perfect application for various Internet business applications.
Developer Benefits
SVG is an important step to making XML (eXtensible Markup Language) the preferred choice for professional Web and cross-media publishing. Because SVG incorporates the same high-quality graphics features as the Adobe(R) PostScript(R) language and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), few changes to existing applications are required to make them SVG authoring packages. In addition, information based on these formats can be easily repurposed into SVG.
SVG is a part of XML, so it also works seamlessly with JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and DOM (Document Object Model) Web standards. This makes SVG easy to manage and control and provides developers with a fully-integrated solution for posting professional graphic content to the Web.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems is a leading provider of publishing and imaging software technologies, and the second largest desktop software company in the world. The company builds award-winning software solutions for professional publishers, web and graphic designers, document-intensive organizations, business users, and consumers. Adobe's products enable customers to create, publish and deliver visually-rich images and documents across all print and electronic media. Adobe's worldwide headquarters is in San Jose, California and its web site is located at www.adobe.com.
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Adobe, the Adobe logo, CyberStudio, Illustrator and PostScript are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.

For Immediate Release

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