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- Downloading is
as simple as clicking on a
link
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- For example, to download the
Garden Towns Brochure, you need simply to click on the
words Garden Towns Brochure in the table below
(it's a copy of the one on our GardenTowns
Downloadable Products page - either will
work):
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- These documents are all in
Adobe Acrobat .pdf file format; your browser
should understand that when you click on a link
which 'points at' a .pdf file, it's supposed to
download the file, put it in a convenient place on
your disk, and open it in Acrobat Reader (or other
Acrobat program, if you have one installed) when it's
fully downloaded. But sometimes, things aren't so
simple. So we've provided here some hints which we
hope might help. If you find that nothing we say helps
you, you might want to wander over to the Wilhelm
Research site; these folk publish information on the
longevity of inkjet inks (vital stuff if you have a
business based on selling ink-jet-printed photographic
images) and have adopted .pdf as a key part of their
publishing methodology. Have a look here
to see what they say about
downloading and printing .pdf files.
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- You might also - if problems persist - try to go
to the source and see what Adobe have to say about
downloading and Acrobat, here.
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- Hints
Here's our set of hints about
how this should work. (Incidentally, if any of you
folks out there have better instructions or a good
link for beginners, please tell us via email to
feedback@kivadesigngroupe.com
)
We'll use Netscape
Communicator running on a Mac under OS 9 to explain
what goes on. Netscape on a (shudder) Windows/Intel
machine should work almost the same. If you use
Internet Explorer instead of Netscape, you'll need to
find its instruction manual (we use Netscape and
simply cannot help you with Explorer - sorry!); but
Explorer offers more or less the same facilities, just
dressed up differently, so you may be able to puzzle
it out from our notes here.
Links
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- Normally, when browsing,
when you click on a link (generally, blue, underlined
text), you end up on a different web page. When you
click on one of our product links (that is, a link
which 'points at' a downloadable product file), rather
than going to another page, your browser should start
downloading the file that the link is 'pointing at'.
You can see what the file is called: when you move
your mouse over a link (without clicking), you'll see
at the bottom of the browser window the link itself.
For our free tryout Little Red Barn it should
say
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- http://www.kivadesigngroupe.com/ProductFilesTrial/LittleRedBarn.pdf
...which tells you that you'd
be downloading a file called
'LittleRedBarn.pdf'.
When you click on a product
link you should see a new, small window get opened by
your browser (like anything else on the Web, this
might take a moment or two). If you chose to download
Little Red Barn, the window would be titled "Save
LittleRedBarn.pdf" and would contain text saying
something like "33% of 166K (at 3KB/sec)", plus a
progress bar, plus further text saying "Will open with
Acrobat Reader 4.0". (At least, this is what you might
see if you use Netscape Communicator).
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- Note: you need Acrobat
Reader 4 (any version) to read some of our files - be
sure to get an up to date version from Adobe if you
don't already have it.
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- Weird Behaviour
Sometimes, different things
can happen. The first possibility is that if your
browser has the Acrobat Plug-In installed, then rather
than opening up the new little window, you'll see the
document appearing in your browser. The second
possibility is that for some reason or another your
browser cannot be bothered to recognise the file as a
.pdf file, and will simply start filling its window
with what looks like gibberish. You'll probably find
both these possibilities inconvenient (unless you have
a very fast internet link).
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- If you don't find the
situation inconvenient, when the file has finished
downlaoding, you'll be able to tell the browser to
save the file using a nornal file-saving dialogue box.
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- If you do find it
inconvenient, simply click on the browser's 'Stop'
button, then click on the 'back' button to return to
the downloads page. Then, instead of just clicking on
the link for the file you want to download, hold (on a
Mac) the 'option' key down, then click, then release
the option key. This will tell the browser you want to
save the file somewhere, and it will give you a normal
filesave dialogue box so you can tell it where.
Setting Up Your Browser to
Save Stuff Where You Want
Otherwise, if all has gone as
expected, your browser will save the file somewhere on
your hard disk. Where it saves it depends on where
you've told the browser to save it.
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- If you're using Netscape
Communicator, you can set up where this is. To do
this, look under the menu 'Edit' for the submenu
'Preferences'. Select Preferences. You should see a
new window open, called something like 'Preferences
for <your name here>". The left hand side of the
window will contain a list of things to set
preferences for - 'Appearance', 'Navigator' and so
forth. Find the one that says 'Navigator'. If it's got
a list of items underneath it saying 'Languages',
'Applications' and 'Smart Browsing', choose
'Applications'. If it doesn't, then it should have a
little triangle to the left of 'Navigator'; click this
so it rotates downward and you should see the list;
then choose 'Applications'.
The right hand side of the
window will now contain a scrolling list, and under
the list will be some buttons, and under the buttons
will be the words 'Download files to: <some folder
(directory) on your hard disk>'. That's where
Netscape is currently saving download files. If you
like where it's putting them, well and good, but you
might want to put them somewhere else. To set that,
simply click on the 'Choose...' button to the right of
this text, and you'll be presented with a
file-selection window. You can navigate to where you
want, and select the folder of your choice. (If you
want to save stuff in a folder which doesn't exist
yet, you'll need to create it before clicking
'Choose...')
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- Finding Stuff That's Got
Lost
Finally, if you've already
downloaded stuff and have no idea where it got saved,
you should be able to use your computer's Find File
facilities to look for it. On a Mac with MacOS 8.5 or
later, go to the desktop and type <Blobble>F
('Blobble' means that key to the left of the space bar
with an Apple on it and a blobble: hold that key down
and while it's down, hit the F key, and then release
the blobble key). This will open up the file searching
capabilities of the OS, and you can use it to search
for the file you're looking for.
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