Increasingly I am finding documents using Adobe PDF Reader.  I am a
relative new user to the internet with only a limited technical
background.  Frankly I am puzzled by the icons used in these
documents. I have downloaded Adobe's "Acrobat Reader 4.0 Guide" but it
over 50 pages long and uses terminology that I do not understand.  Is
there any place on the web where I can find a simplified explanation
of how I can navigate my way through these PDF docunents?

Hello mmaks-ga:

Thank you for your excellent question. I teach a 12-week course (at a
local community college) for people who are new to the Internet and I
can assure you that many of them share your confusion about the
interface for Adobe's Acrobat Reader for PDF files. While there are a
few icons and buttons that are similar to those found in your browser,
there are also several other, very important ones that are certainly
new to you.

Fortunately for everyone, there are *many* excelllent free online
tutorials for Acrobat. The following is a listing of just a few with
their individual strengths.

Acrobat Reader Tutorial (University of Illinois):
http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AIM/scale/tutorials/Acrobat/
This simple, yet excellent, overview of the most important
Acrobat-specific navigation icons is well set-up graphically and uses
illustrations, rather than technical terms, to describe functionality.
A good place to start.

Acrobat Reader Tutorial (Electronic Engineering Times - Aisa)
http://www.eetasia.com/SERVICES/ACROHELP.HTM
A really great one-pager - well designed and described!

Working With Adobe Acrobat Reader (Jefferson County Public Schools):
http://jeffcoweb.jeffco.k12.co.us/isu/home/acrotut.html
This tutorial is created using screenshots of Acrobat and then
identifying the icons with red arrows. While it describes more of the
functionality, the individual explanations are less descriptive.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 5 for Windows (Georgetown University):
http://www.library.georgetown.edu/bic/help/acrobat.htm
Includes instructions about searching for words, copying, and printing
as well as the standard navigation stuff. While this one is for
version 5 of the reader, most of it will still hold true for you
version 4.

These are just a few of the places where more beginning-level help can
be found on Adobe Acrobat Reader. To find more, enter the search terms
below in Google. In fact, this technique of searching on Google can be
used to find simplified instructions about just about any additional
piece of software you will encounter while using the Internet.

Happy surfing!

Search terms: "adobe acrobat reader" tutorial

websearcher-ga