Adobe Acrobat

A number of documents on this site are presented in pdf format. The page explains how Adobe Acrobat downloads a pdf file to your machine and allows you to connect to Adobe to get a free copy of the Acrobat Reader.

Get Free Acrobat Reader

Adobe Acrobat Overview

Adobe Acrobat is a document format that permits the display and printing of documents in their original appearance, regardless of which software or fonts were used in its creation.

Because it preserves the appearance of the original document so well, and because the viewer is free, Acrobat has become a very popular way for documents to be made available to others over the Internet.

Adobe Acrobat supports displaying, searching, and printing of the document. It does not permit editing of the original document.

Using Adobe Acrobat Adobe

Acrobat documents are identified by a .pdf file extension, and must be viewed in the Acrobat reader software. This software is free, and must be installed onto your local hard drive. Get Free Acrobat Reader

Once installed, clicking on any link to a Acrobat file in your browser will load the Acrobat reader and display the document.

For the Windows version, the Acrobat Reader is a stand alone program that can be run outside your browser. A file association is created between .pdf and Acrobat, so that double-clicking on any .pdf file in file manager will load the Acrobat reader and display the document.

Saving the Acrobat document to disk, then viewing it in the stand alone Acrobat Reader, provides additional features such as word search, which are not available when viewing the document within the browser.

Installing the free Adobe Acrobat Reader Software

(These instructions represent options available on the Adobe web site, and thus are subject to change without notice)

1) Click on the following link to reach Adobe's page for downloading the Acrobat Reader. Get Free Acrobat Reader

2) Choose the Reader version, operating system, and language for the Acrobat software, then click on the Download button.

3) Click on the filename for the Adobe Acrobat download file, and store the file onto your local hard drive. Follow the directions as presented on the Adobe download page to complete installation.

4) To inform Netscape how to display if Netscape presents a "Unknown File Type" dialog box, for the file type of "application/pdf": click on the "Pick App" button, and Browse to select the Acrobat reader program. Select the appropriate file for your operating system. The document will be displayed, and all subsequent .pdf files will automatically launch the Acrobat Reader.

Advantages of Publishing Documents with Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat software provides an efficient means to quickly publish documents to the Web in their original look and feel, without HTML coding.

Adobe has versions of the Acrobat reader available for a wide variety of systems, including MS-DOS, MS Windows, MacIntosh, OS/2, Sun Solaris, SunOS, IBM AIX, HP-UX, Silicon Graphics IRIX, and Linux.

Related information on Adobe and its products:

Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe Product Index
Distributing Adobe Acrobat Reader