PDF Files On The W-E-B What PDF formats can offer in design capabilities for your site
By Aliza P. Sherman •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
PDF or portable document format files are a file format thatallows you to replicate a particular page, retaining the entireformatting and design.
While HTML design is getting to the point where you can recreateany newsletter, brochure or other document design prettyaccurately, there are times when maintaining the full integrity ofthe document is important, so you'll want to turn the originalfile into a PDF file.
Your original file can be a Word file, Excel file or any otherfile, and you'll need to either purchase the Adobe Acrobatsoftware at your favorite software store or Web site, or you canactually have Adobe convert yourfile for you. If you're working with sophisticatedillustration, layout or graphic programs, such as Illustrator,Quark or Photoshop, you can obtain plug-ins or small softwareadd-ons that can help you directly convert files made in thoseprograms into PDF files.
To be able to read the PDF file, your visitors will need theAdobe Reader software on their computer, which is available forfree at the Adobe site. For their convenience, you may want toinclude a link to Adobe on your site next to the links to your PDFfiles so they can download the reader if they don't alreadyhave it.
Aliza Sherman is an entrepreneur and author of Cybergrrl:A Woman's Guide to the World Wide Web (Ballantine Books).She is currently working on her next book and new company.
