Adobe Digital Editions promises better DRM security, improved layout support

Adobe has released Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 on Windows and Mac, a major new version of its eBook manager. The tool, which helps users browse, organize and read both free and purchased eBooks in EPUB, PDF, and PDF/A formats, offers more secure DRM, improved PDF search tools and enhanced display of certain book types.

The headline new feature is the new DRM Scheme, which Adobe says has been "hardened and made more secure" to prevent unauthorized viewing of files protected by Digital Rights Management.

Version 3.0 also promises search improvements when hunting through PDF files, making it possible to now search for text in a specific range.

There’s enhanced support for vertical layout and orientation, achieved by adding limited support for the "epub-text-orientation" CSS property. Four of the property’s six values -- mixed, upright, sideways-right and sideways -- are accessible to Adobe Digital Editions. It also now properly aligns special characters that act as both full- and half-width.

Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 now renders books that use CSS 2.1 thanks to its support for CSS 2.1 text properties. These include supporting the position and z-index properties, enhancing support for the CSS Float property, plus adding a new supported value -- inside -- to the list-style-position property.

Finally, the Mac build has also been migrated away from the older XCode 3.1 and OS X 10.5 SDK to the latest version of XCode (v5.0) as well as the OS X 10.7 SDK.

Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 is available now as a freeware download for Windows and Mac. Users will need an Adobe ID in order to sign in and authorize the computer as a supported device for reading protected eBook files.