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Working With Adobe Acrobat Reader

Contents

Part I.  The opening Display

Part II.  The Navigation Pane

Part III.  Using it with Netscape 

How to Get and Install Adobe Acrobat Reader

 Many documents on the World Wide Web are available only in PDF format.  PDF (Portable Document Format) has many advantages, one of the most important of which is that they can be read on any kind of computer.  The only requirement is that the computer must have a Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free program) installed.  If the program is installed, it will open automatically when you try to open a PDF document.  You can also save the document and then use Adobe Acrobat Reader by itself to read it later.  This tutorial will explain the display window of Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0x.  The pictures show the PC version, but the Macintosh version is very similar.

Part I.  The opening Display of Adobe Acrobat Reader.
If you use Adobe Acrobat Reader to open a program, this is what you will see.

Explanation

1.  Navigation Pane:  Clicking this button will open the navigation pane and allow you see the preset bookmarks, if the document has them.  The bookmarks work like a table of contents and allow you to click instantly to the section you need.  (See Part II)  Note: many documents, especially short documents, do not have bookmarks.
2.  Thumbnails: This opens the pane that shows the thumbnails (miniature pages) of all the pages. (Again, many documents will not have thumbnails.)
3.  Hand tool: Used for normal page use
4.  Zoom tool: get a close up of a section.  Click on this tool and then clik on the apporpriate place in the document.  You can drag a marquee across an area to zoom into that entire area.  To Zoom out again,  Hold the control key (PC) or the option key (Macintosh) down while clicking on the zoom tool.
5.  Text tool: Use this to highlight text for copying and pasting.
6.  Go to the first page of the document.
7.  Go back one page.
8.  Go forward one page.
9.  Go to the last page of the document.
10.  Select the size of the page in your window.
11.  Find Tool: Find the text you are looking for.


Part II.  Using the Navigation Pane
This diagram shows what the window looks like with the Navigation Pane open.  If the document does not have bookmarks, the pane will be empty.

Explanation

1.  The Navigation Pane: The bookmark identified is Customize.  Clicking on it took us to this page in the document.

2.  The Navigation Pane button:  Clicking on this brought us to this view.
 


Part III.  The Adobe Acrobat Netscape Plug-in.
When you open are in Netscape and click on a PDF document, it will be opened as a special window in Netscape.  The buttons are almost the same as they are when you open Adobe Acrobat Reader by itself.  Due to a flaw in earlier versions of the program, sometimes you will get a blank page when you try to open a PDF document in Netscape.  If that happens, just click on Reload.

Explanation

1.  The Printer button: This allows you to print the PDF document directly out of Netscape.  You can select which pages you wish to print..

2.  The Navigation Pane button:  It works the same as it does in the other windows.

3.  Reload:  Use this if you get a blank page when opening a PDF document.


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