SHOWCASE ’99, SAN DIEGO, Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Adobe Systems
(Nasdaq: ADBE), 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 http://www.adobe.com.