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Dyun
15 Feb 2011, 01:47 PM
(Moderators, please move thread if it isn't in the appropriate section)

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I joined because I have a technical question about placing PDFs on a website. I've just been asked to do the following:

I was told to create a website that would be reached through a personal URL sent through e-mail. Client wants customers to be able to click on the personal link in the e-mail, which then automatically opens the PDF as a viewable web document. He wants it to immediately fill the customer's monitor, to make viewing it as easy as possible. The customers the e-mail is going to have a very short attention span, and won't be the most web/technology savvy people on earth.

I suggested we convert the PDF to a SWF file and place it on the landing page, but that's not what the client wants. They insist they do NOT want a button link to download the document, and they do NOT want to get fancy with flash.

My question to you is.... how do I accomplish this? Web design is part of my job, but it doesn't require me to be an expert on coding. I work with a simple approach and this task seems to be way over my head. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

silverLizard
22 Feb 2011, 12:32 PM
Most browsers will open a pdf in the browser window by default, unless the user has set the browser to do otherwise in the preferences. The pdf viewer will automatically fill the window with the document. The catch is if the clients don't have acrobat installed on their machine. So what you'll want to do is send them a link to a page which has some javascript that determines whether or not they have acrobat installed, if not, they get sent to the acrobat download page. Otherwise they get sent to the pdf.