What are "file types"?

The following file types are located in the SearchWithin download center:

PDF means Portable Document Format and is the open de facto standard for electronic document distribution worldwide. The PDF format preserves fonts, formatting, graphics, and color of any source document and is readable by mobile devices, Macintosh, Windows, and other operating systesms. Adobe's free Reader software, available on Adobe's Web site, is widely used for reading PDF files.

JPG is a standardized image compression mechanism and is a shortened acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, an industry committee that developed a compression standard for still images. You will find JPEG files on the Web with the file extension ".jpg." You can view jpg files with Macintosh, Windows, and other operating systems as well as most Web browsers and mobile devices so long as you have a jpg image viewer.

MP3 is one of the most popular file formats on the Web for distributing near-CD-quality audio. A one-megabyte file is equal to about one minute of music. This type of file requires an MP3 player, which is available on mobile devices as well as within Macintosh, Windows, and other operating systems. MP3 files usually play automatically when clicked within a Web page, or they can be downloaded to your device or computer.

HTM is an easy one to remember: a link to another Web page. If you want to get technical, HTM is a hypertext markup language file containing hypertext that a Web browser can read and interpret.

VID is our odd way of using a three-letter abbreviation for a video, usually hosted on YouTube or another website that streams videos.