Adobe has added capabilities to InDesign CS4 previously reserved for Flash developers, making it more likely that design pros can output PDFs or Flash files as final publishing products in addition to creating print workflow PDFs whose final destination is commercial presses.

Michael Ninness, InDesign senior product manager, says these additions will help enable designers—who typically aren't as well-versed in Flash as their developer peers—to create interactive versions of print PDFs that are a digital end product themselves, with buttons and page transitions that never were intended to be printed.

"Consumers want a mix of media, and while we don't think print is dead, we think that print-only is something publishers aren't doing anymore," Ninness says. "That changes what our customers are asking of us in order to publish to multiple media..., They're saying 'Hey, we've got an extensive staff that knows CMYK, output issues, and everything related to a PDF workflow. How do we train our staff to do interactive and online content as well?'"

Such files—in some cases, alternative versions of print publications—are already finding their way online at proprietary magazine sites like Better Homes & Gardens, digital newsstands that use simple Flash editions of PDF files of print magazines on behalf of publishers such as Zinio, or libraries open to all like Issuu.com.

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