While I try not to focus on one particular subject or promote a specific item in my blogs, I feel compelled to dedicate this blog to the new and rich features made available in the version 7 release of the Pageflex software. This release is full of a great variety of improvements and completely new features that it just screams "blog me!".
If you ask a Pageflex representative what's new in the version 7 release, they might form their answer around the new Adobe InDesign integration. There is now available a Pageflex plug-in to InDesign CS4 that offers pallets similar to what you have seen in PF Studio. This Studio ID plug-in alone moves InDesign closer to Variable Data more than anything in the past. With this plug-in, you can output directly from InDesign to PostScript, PDF, PPML, or JPEG files. The plug-in is available in both Windows and Mac OS formats.
What if you want to take those InDesign files to your Storefront? That, too, is a new feature available in version 7 - Server ID. Implementation of this basically puts an InDesign Server engine under the hood of Storefront as its composition engine - by itself or in addition to the traditional NuDoc engine. Storefront users see no difference in the workflow. They'd be hard pressed to know if the file was from InDesign or Studio - exactly what you want.
Indeed the integration of Pageflex and Adobe products combining to make a unique and powerful solution are worthy of applause, but there is much more in the mainline Pageflex release than that.
Storefront probably inherits the majority of accolade in features obtained in the new release. These features include:
- Ability to drag items in a list up or down (rather than having to click the up/down arrow until you're blue in the face)
- When users need to select an image from a Image Choice, select a datalist, or other action that requires another window, instead of opening a new window, they're now faced with a nifty floating palette
- You now have the ability to remove users, orders, assets, and even deployments in Storefront
- One can now schedule a task to remove Storefront logs (we presume other scheduled tasks may be on the way)
- There are improvements in skinning, specifically in the area of "Inserts" that can be added to more steps than the previous releases
- There are new Pop-up controls in Storefront and Campaign Manager
- Another great feature is the ability to schedule when a Campaign can be mailed in Campaign Manager
- V7 offers a change in the way Pageflex generates PDF files - still using Adobe libraries, but with more Adobe Distiller-like capabilities
- If you're a Storefront administrator like myself and dislike using Internet Explorer, V7 will now let you use Firefox and Safari for these tasks. Chrome users, stand-by
- Several API, Document Actions, programming features, and extensions have been added or improved upon
Of course there are more features and enhancements but the above list would hopefully make you salivate to know more. It's always encouraging to see vendors address customer and client needs and I believe Pageflex has made another step in the right direction with this release.