According to a weekend security blog posting from Adobe, the update to Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8/9 will include an new auto-updating feature for the Windows and Apple Mac computing platforms.

This feature has been in active beta test for several months, Infosecurity understands, but is now being rolled out to most users.

In his Adobe blog posting, Steve Gottwals says the new update feature is an indication that user security is a key priority for the company. It is hoped that further revisions of Adobe software will include a main screen option to promote users to auto-update-enable their software, as is the case with Microsoft Windows.

"During our quarterly update on January 12, 2010, and then again for an out-of-cycle update on February 16, 2010, we exercised the new updater with our beta testers. This allowed us to test a variety of network configurations encountered on the Internet in order to ensure a robust update experience", said Adobe's Gottwals.

"That beta process has been a successful one, and we've incorporated several positive changes to the end-user experience and system operation. Now, we're ready for the next phase of deployment", he added.

Gottwals went on to say that the new updater has been optimised for the Apple Mac and Windows platforms, and "as you will notice, on Windows offers an option called `Automatically install updates.'

"With this option, to avoid disturbing the user, the new updater favours a time when the system is not busy to install new updates without user intervention", he said.

"As always, we will continue to communicate important details with you at the appropriate time", Adobe's Gottals added.