PDF- (Portable Document Format) Adobe has created a worldwide standard for electronic document distribution. These PDF documents preserve the exact look and content of the originals, complete with fonts and graphics, and they can be distributed by e-mail or stored on the World Wide Web, an intranet, a file system, or a CD-ROM for other users to view on Microsoft ® Windows ® , Mac OS, and UNIX ® platforms.
To view a PDF file, you must have Adobe's Acrobat Reader. This viewer is available free by clicking this button.
Zip- "Zipped" files are compressed files used to help distribute and store files. Zip files can contain one or more files. These "archived" Zip files make it easy to group files and make transporting and copying these files faster.
Zip files save time and space, and make downloading software and transferring e-mail attachments faster. Typical uses for Zip files include:
- Most files available on ftp sites, bulletin boards and electronic services like CompuServe are distributed as archives. Two benefits of using archives for electronic file distribution are that only one file transfer operation ("download") is required to obtain all related files, and file transfer time is minimized because the files in an archive are compressed.
- It is often useful to send a group of related files to an associate. Rather than distributing individual files it is often easier to distribute the files as an archive to benefit from the file grouping and compression.
- Some files are important but used infrequently. To save disk space simply compress these files into an archive when they are not used, and decompress them only when needed.
WinZip (Windows) - www.winzip.com
PKZip (Windows, OS/2, Unix, DOS) - www.pkware.com
Stuffit (Windows, Mac) - www.aladdinsys.com