Preparing Content for your Web Site
Overview - Keep It Simple! Using Content from other applications Using Microsoft Word Incorporating PowerPoint presentations All About Adobe Acrobat
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Do not delete cell

All About Adobe Acrobat

• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• A Primer on Acrobat for Teachers
• PDF files - what are they?
• How do I create a PDF document?

Adobe Acrobat Reader

If you have ever looked at your school's Ofsted Report on the Internet you will probably be familiar with the Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is a piece of software which allows you to view PDF documents stored on the Internet or on your own computer. While most people have used Acrobat Reader at some point (for example viewing an Ofsted report from the Ofsted web site), not many have created their own.

If you want to find out if the Adobe Acrobat Reader is installed on your computer, visit the HGfL Plugins page.

A Primer on Acrobat for Teachers

The rest of this page is similar to (but not based on!) an excellent tutorial written by Erica Peto found on Kent School District web site (in Washington State in the USA). If you would like to view the tutorial (which is in PDF format and therefore requires the Acrobat Reader) then:

• download a copy of the tutorial held on this server or
• visit the original site

PDF Files - what are they?

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is a document format that can be viewed on almost all types of computers and even handheld devices such as a Palm Pilot or Windows Pocket PC. As its name implies, it is portable - this means that you only need to create a PDF document once for it to be viewed by people with Windows PCs, Apple Macintoshes, Acorn RISCs and Linux comupters to name but a few. A user of one of these computers will need to install the (free) Acrobat Reader in order to view a PDF file.

Easily printable documents

Another advantage of PDF documents are that they are designed to be printable - 'normal' web pages aren't always so and can produce unpredictable results when printed.

Use your fonts and styles

Typically, web pages have a restricted set of fonts, so if you have a Christmas-style font for your newsletter or a school 'house font' then it's difficult to incorporate this into a web page. In a PDF document, the fonts come as part of the document, so someone reading your Christmas newsletter doesn't need to have your Christmas-style font on their computer to see the document as you intended.

PDF documents also preserve features such as Microsoft WordArt, clip art, text boxes and other features that are often discarded when a document is converted into a web page.

• View a sample Acrobat document and see what it can do.

How do I create a PDF document?

Get the appropriate software

The easiest way to do this is to purchase the 'full version' of Adobe Acrobat. For schools in Hertfordshire, this is available for around £80 for the CD and a one user licence. Hertfordshire schools can buy it from County Supplies and Contact Services.

• County Supplies and Contract Services

Make sure your computer will run the full version of Acrobat!

Before you order a copy of the full version of Acrobat you need to ensure that it will run on the computer that you would like to use. For example, if you have a computer running Windows 2000 then the full version of Acrobat 6 requires Service Pack 2 or greater to be installed - if you only have Service Pack 1 then the software will not run. A computer running Windows 95 or 98 may not be suitable to run Acrobat, so ensure that you check this before you purchase, if you are not sure consult your IT technician.

Install the software

Once you have the CD you'll need to install the software on each machine that you would like to create PDFs on - a typical situation might be:

• one copy on the computer where the school's web site is maintained - this allows whoever is maintaining the site to create PDFs from Publisher files, Word documents, etc.
• one copy on the computer on which the school newsletter is produced (this may be in the school office) - this allows the person creating the newsletter (which will probably be printed) to create a PDF at the same time

The above scenario would require one CD and two licences to be purchased.

A simple way to convert a document into Acrobat PDF format for use in your web site

This is an abridged version of the Acrobat Primer for Teachers.

1. Open the document in the piece of software package that it was created in.
2. Choose File » Print.
3. Select Acrobat from the printer list.
4. Save into the folder on your computer where your school web pages are located.
5. Using your web page editing software (such as Dreamweaver), open the page you want to have a link to the PDF document from.
6. Create a link from the page to the PDF file.