Adobe Acrobat and You – Viewing a .pdf file
June 20, 2008
One of the best things to happen to internet communications was the invention of Adobe Acrobat (any document ending with .pdf). PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and basically it “takes a snapshot” of your page. Why? So you can share your work with anyone, with any type of computer (Mac or PC, etc) with any type of word-processor. So no more will a student say, “I couldn’t open the review sheet because we have a Mac, or we don’t have Word, or my computer can’t handle Hebrew, etc.”
All the receiving end requires is a free program to read the document. Most Internet browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) can also read .pdf files.
Adobe Reader is available for free download, and is compatible with all types of computers. Feel free to uncheck “Also Install: Adobe Media Player” if you want. You don’t need it to read .pdfs.
Another program that opens Acrobat files is Foxit. It is also free, much smaller and quicker to open than Adobe Reader, and I find myself turning to it more and more.
Foxit Reader can be downloaded here. [You want to download the file called Foxit Reader 2.3 (.exe)]
Click here for a shot of Adobe Reader and here for a shot of the same document opened in Foxit Reader.
