Microsoft's Threat to Adobe

Microsoft is ramping up efforts to take on rival Adobe by relesing on Monday a second beta of Acrylic, a program intended to ease the process of creating graphics for Web pages. Microsoft initially released a preview of Acrylic in June, and since that time the application has been downloaded close to 200,000 times.

Microsoft has described Acrylic as the "codename for an innovative illustration, painting and graphics tool that provides exciting creative capabilities for designers working in print, web, video, and interactive media."

Much of the code in Acrylic is based on a graphics program named Expression, which Microsoft picked up through the acquisition of Creature House in 2003.

Combined with a new printing engine dubbed "Metro," analysts see these recent moves by Microsoft as a direct challenge to Adobe, whose popular Acrobat and Photoshop programs could be direct competitors to Microsoft's new ventures. Acrylic is able to both open and export to Adobe's Photoshop PSD and Acrobat PDF formats, with PowerPoint support added to the latest release.

The updated pre-release of Acrylic, called a Community Technology Preview (CTP), will also have the capability to export designs into Extensible Application Markup Language, or XAML, the new format that will enable developers to take advantage of Windows Vista's new graphics engine known as Avalon.

Microsoft is also ostensibly readying a full graphics software suite dubbed "Expression Studio".



Here is one screen shot from Acrylic, as i think it needs far more developments to touch the Adobe's line.