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Web address styling in PDF files

StevenD
Registered: Oct 6 2006
Posts: 368

I know that a PDF file opened in Acrobat or Adobe Reader will automatically read properly formated web addresses as links such as "www.mywebaddress.com" or "http://thehomelyloaf.blogspot.com" but it won't if the "www" is left off.

The editors here at work say the corporate style guide says to leave the "www" off. They say that is a growing trend.

Is it a growing trend?

If that is the case then the feature in Acrobat that reads web address as links will be of no use.

StevenD

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro Extended 9.1.3, Windows
daka630
Expert
Registered: Mar 1 2007
Posts: 1420
Quote:
Is it a growing trend?
I guess that would depend upon whom you are asking, eh?

Just an aside, but you gotta grin at this as the trend followers often are not the ones who implement.

Regardless, there's a way to have your link and no http:// or www in the text.
- use an authoring application that supports Adobe's PDFMaker -
- have the PDFMaker is configured to carry through links -

Then author without the http:// or www and lay down the link over the text that contains the http://.Otherwise, with no "http" or "www" Adobe Reader or Acrobat is not going to recognize a link's presence.

Say you use MS Word, enter "Adobe" and use the hypertext feature to create a web link. Enter "http://www.adobe.com/"

Might want the text to be some color.

The PDF will have ...text ...text [color=blue]Adobe[/color] text... text...
with the PDF Link annotation over [color=blue]Adobe[/color] text.
The Link annotation's "action" is to go to http://adobe.com/
Mouse hover over the link and you'll see the URL.

Be well...

Be well...

StevenD
Registered: Oct 6 2006
Posts: 368
Thanks for the tips. We use InDesign as our main publishing tool and I believe the production folks and/or the editors could set something up like you are suggesting with other apps. I'm sure they would love that suggestion. I am mainly interested to know what other think about this so called trend if there really is one. I heard someone make a comment on NPR one time a couple of years ago that leaving off the www was wrong. That was a couple of years ago. Generally people are lazy creatures and we love to shorten things a much as possible so I wouldn't be surprised if there really was a trend forming.

StevenD