Prevent your online PDF from appearing inside the browser.
Some PDF documents on the Web are intended for online reading, but most are intended for download and then offline reading or printing. You can prevent confusion by ensuring your readers get the Save As . . . dialog when they click your Download Now PDF link. Here are a few ways to do this.
Keep in mind that any online PDF can be downloaded. If your online PDF is hyperlinked to integrate with your web site, you should take precautions against these links being broken upon download.
One option is to use only absolute URLs throughout your PDF.
Another option is to set the Base URL of your PDF. In Acrobat 6, consult File >Document Properties >Advanced >Base URL. In Acrobat 5, consult File >Document Properties >Base URL.
Zip It Up
The quickest solution for a single PDF is to compress it into a zip file, which gives you a file that simply cannot be read online. This has the added benefit of reducing the download file size a little. The downside is that your readers must have a program to unzip the file. You should include a hyperlink to where they can download such a program (e.g., http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/). Stay away from self-extracting executables, because they work on only a single platform.
You can also apply zip compression on the fly with your web server. Here is an example in PHP. Adjust the passthru argument so that it points to your local copy of zip, download it in http://ifile.it/8njgeb2
If you have a PDF located at http://www.pdfhacks.com/docs/mydoc.pdf and you copied the preceding script to http://www.pdfhacks.com/docs/pdfzip.php, you could serve mydoc.pdf.zip with the URL http://www.pdfhacks.com/docs/pdfzip.php?fn=mydoc.pdf.
Some PDF documents on the Web are intended for online reading, but most are intended for download and then offline reading or printing. You can prevent confusion by ensuring your readers get the Save As . . . dialog when they click your Download Now PDF link. Here are a few ways to do this.
Keep in mind that any online PDF can be downloaded. If your online PDF is hyperlinked to integrate with your web site, you should take precautions against these links being broken upon download.
One option is to use only absolute URLs throughout your PDF.
Another option is to set the Base URL of your PDF. In Acrobat 6, consult File >Document Properties >Advanced >Base URL. In Acrobat 5, consult File >Document Properties >Base URL.
Zip It Up
The quickest solution for a single PDF is to compress it into a zip file, which gives you a file that simply cannot be read online. This has the added benefit of reducing the download file size a little. The downside is that your readers must have a program to unzip the file. You should include a hyperlink to where they can download such a program (e.g., http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/). Stay away from self-extracting executables, because they work on only a single platform.
You can also apply zip compression on the fly with your web server. Here is an example in PHP. Adjust the passthru argument so that it points to your local copy of zip, download it in http://ifile.it/8njgeb2
If you have a PDF located at http://www.pdfhacks.com/docs/mydoc.pdf and you copied the preceding script to http://www.pdfhacks.com/docs/pdfzip.php, you could serve mydoc.pdf.zip with the URL http://www.pdfhacks.com/docs/pdfzip.php?fn=mydoc.pdf.
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