Adobe, the leading offline design software maker, is branching out into the convergence business with a new online Acrobat community that will allow users to view documents, make comments and changes via a conferring interactive website Acrobat.com

Adobe maybe a late comer to the table of online document sharing, but the Mountain View company is looking to leverage it's dominance within the design and publishing industry to make inroads into Microsoft and Google territory. The launch of Acrobat.com was a simultaneous announcement with the new version of Adobe Acrobat which has long been the industry standard for creating offline portable document files, or pdf's. The new iteration will also allow documents to embed flash animation and video components creating limitless capabilities for designer's and publisher's to bring interactive elements to an otherwise hitherto static medium.

The move by the design software maker pits it directly against Google and Microsoft who are also eager to conquer both online and offline document worlds as both companies already have their own file-sharing options.

Acrobat.com is currently in a beta trial period, anyone interested can sign up and access the Buzzword word processor to create basic documents that can be reviewed, stored and edited by other colleagues online. The platform also allows for web conferencing in real time without the need to have any Adobe products.

The software version will link directly to menus at Acrobat.com enabling instant multiple access. The complete Acrobat 9.0 is due out next month.