Adobe Acrobat allows documents to be viewed the way
they were meant to be viewed. For example, let's say you've created
a fabulous web newsletter using a unique font, but after you send
it out to everyone, you receive complaints that the text scrolls
off the screen, or the font is illegible. If you saved the file in
a .pdf (Portable Document Format) format, the layout and the font
will look as fabulous
on
your readers' computers as it does on yours. The only catch is everyone
has to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on their computers.
If you simply want to read a .pdf file, all you need is the Reader
which you can download for free. Creating
a .pdf is relatively simple as well. Adobe offers Acrobat that will allow you
to design
and edit .pdf files, but it costs money. If
you have WordPerfect, you can export
your word processing documents to .pdf. There are also free software you can download that will create a virtual printer
on your system. All you have to do is print the document in Word, Notepad, etc., but
instead of sending it to your printer, you send your document to the virtual .pdf
printer. It will ask you what you want to call the .pdf file and
where to save it.
Converting a .pdf file to a Word (.doc) or Wordperfect (.wpd) document, html, or text file requires a little more work. Check out the download section for some helpful applications.
With the release of the latest versions, the
Reader has noticably become more slow to load and increasingly bloated. Adobe has addressed this issue with the 7.0 version. Adobe forces you to download the full version from their website, but you can use this link to download a quicker, slimmer version of Acrobat Reader. Trust me, you won't miss anything. Also, try PDF SpeedUp.
| Adobe Acrobat Family |
See what Adobe has to offer in their Acrobat product line, get support, and download the free Reader. |
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7
Freeware
 |
Direct link to the unbloated 7.0 version via ftp.adobe.com. Still nearly 13MB.
|
CutePDF Writer
Freeware |
Creates a virtual printer in Windows that converts a document in any application capable of printing into a .pdf file. Press Ctrl-P to bring up the Print dialog, change your printer to CutePDF Writer, and press OK. A Save As... dialog will appear, so you can specify where to save the file and what to call it. Also requires GNU Ghostscript to be installed. |
PDF SpeedUp
Freeware |
Disables some of the features in Acrobat Reader that makes it slow to launch such as plug-ins, automatic updates, and Adobe product ads. |
pdf995
Adware/Shareware
|
Creates a virtual printer in Windows that converts a document into a .pdf. Press Ctrl-P to bring up the Print dialog, change your printer to pdf995, and press OK. A Save As... dialog will appear, so you can specify where to save the file and what to call it. You'll need to download and install both the printer driver and conversion module to get started. The application does not contain spyware, but will open ads in your web browser every time you convert a document. Register the software to get rid of the ads. |
pdfEdit995
Adware/Shareware
|
Convert a .pdf document into a text (.txt), Word (.doc), or HTML document. Requires pdf995 to be installed first. The application does not contain spyware, but will open ads in your web browser every time you convert a document. You'll need to download the HTML module to convert the .pdf to a web page. |
PDFTOHTML
Freeware |
A command line program that converts .pdf files to .html files. You'll need 4 files from Ghostscript in the same directory as PDFtoHTML which are available here. A front end (or GUI) is available as well. |
|
Last Updated April 8, 2005
