Create a PDF thumbnail gallery

Lots of folks make PDF files available on their Web sites. If you have multiple PDFs that your visitors might want to download, you've probably thought about the best way to present the links. One of our favorite tricks is to create a little thumbnail version of the PDF in Adobe® GoLive®, and then to add a link to the original PDF so that users can quickly see what they're getting.

Create PDF thumbnails

The process for creating thumbnails of your PDFs is easy. Drag and Drop a PDF file into the Layout Editor. If the PDF is multi-page, you'll get a dialog box called PDF Options asking you to choose which page you want to use to create the image.

Select which page of the PDF you want to use to create an thumbnail preview image.

Make your selection and click OK. When the Save for Web window appears, compress the image as a GIF or JPEG, and resize it so it's tiny.

Note: Be sure to click the Apply button in the Image Size area before pressing Enter on your keyboard or the resize will be dismissed before it has been applied.

When you are all done with the settings, click Save and save the image into your site. Now visitors don't have to guess what's inside the PDF file they're about to download because they'll see a nice thumbnail preview. Use this method on a page with multiple PDFs and you can quickly and easily create a very attractive PDF gallery.

Link to the original PDF

Once your PDF thumbnail is on the page, simply select it, click the Link tab in the Image Inspector, and then point & shoot to the original PDF to create the link.

Excerpted from “Adobe GoLive CS Tips & Tricks” by Lynn Grillo and Adam Pratt. Copyright ©2004 by Peachpit Press. Used with the permission of Pearson Education and Peachpit Press. To buy this book, visit www.peachpit.com .