On Screen Presentations with Adobe PDF.

Adobe Acrobat (including the free Reader) has the capability of taking any PDF and displaying it “full screen” In this mode, a black background is drawn to the screen, and then each page of the PDF is displayed.

Using the arrow keys or mouse button, the next page of the PDF can be displayed.

By making PDF files that fix the scale of the screen (a ratio of 1.3 to 1; ie: 1024 x 768 pixels) – the onscreen presentation can match a presentation made in an application such as Microsoft PowerPoint. In Adobe InDesign, you would create a document where its measurement is in this ratio.

In fact, you can create presentations in PowerPoint, and using the PDFMaker plugin (comes as a part of Acrobat 4 and 5) PDFs for onscreen presentation.

By using PDF, the fonts are embedded into the PDF (no need to send them along with the PPT file)

Displaying Fullscreen

From the View>Full Screen option, a PDF will be displayed in full screen. It is also worthwhile remembering the keyboard commands for zooming in (control +) or zooming out (control -) — all the keyboard shortcuts still work in Full Screen mode.

In Edit>Preferences>General, and specifically in the Full Screen section of Acrobat you are able to customise:

– auto advance of slides every n seconds
– keyboard/mouse advancing of slides
– background colour

In File>Document Properties>Open Options you can specify that when a PDF is opened, it defaults to Full Screen mode.