January 11, 2008...7:00 am
Free Fridays #8 CutePDF Writer
Now that the Adobe have handed over the PDF format to the ISO and it has been approved as a standard open format, PDF has moved from a de facto standard to a real standard for transferring and archiving information. So if there were any doubts, it’s definitely here to stay.
Adobe has always made information about the format available, so not much has changed here, but an official seal of approval from the ISO must surely mean that the format will extend it’s reach and become even more popular.
Create PDFs on Windows For Free
This week’s free programme, CutePDF Writer for Windows, enables you to save most kinds of documents as a PDFs. Using Adobe’s freely available Acrobat Reader, anyone can read PDF documents and most computers have Acrobat or some other PDF reader installed.
When it comes to creating PDFs though, most people don’t need to perform complex operations offered by the full Acrobat suite of programmes, so spending a couple of hundred pounds on Adobe’s software is often unnecessary.
The thing I like about CutePDF Writer is that it’s very simple to use and once installed is available from virtually any other programme that can print.
Take your web browser for example if you want to save a web page to send to someone else just choose Print from the file menu or press Ctrl+P and the print dialogue will appear. Now choose CutePDF Writer as the printer and a Save As box will appear. Name your file and choose where to save it and your done. It’s that simple.
The same procedure can be used for spreadsheets, word documents and most other programme from which you can print.
Of course if you have a Mac then this is nothing new as hitting print and then saving as PDF has been the norm for some time now, but for the Windows users (including Vista) CutePDF Writer combined Acrobat Reader give you a free set of tools for saving your documents as PDFs and reading PDFs created by others.
You can download a free copy of CutePDF Writer here.
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