Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Viewing PDF Files

PDFs are viewed and printed via the freely available and widely distributed Acrobat Reader . Acrobat Reader is also available as a plug-in (called PDFViewer) or ActiveX control and is supported by all the popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox/Mozilla, Safari, Opera) on a variety of platforms including Windows, Mac, and Unix.

When a user clicks on a link to a PDF file from a web page, what happens depends on how the browser is configured. If the browser has the PDFViewer plug-in , the document displays right in the browser window; the plug-in adds a toolbar to the browser window for navigating through the PDF document. If the browser is configured to use Acrobat Reader as a helper application, the browser automatically launches the reader, and the PDF displays in the separate application window.

Without the Reader or plug-in, when a browser encounters a PDF file, it issues a prompt to install the plug-in, choose a helper application, or save the file to disk.