< How to Open Downloaded Files
The information below will help you to open and use files files which you download from ReadyRussian.org.
The handouts, worksheets, and quizzes are all available in PDF format. If you download the PDF files and print them you will get much better results than you would if you printed the web pages since browsers still do not do a good job of printing web pages. The popup-menu version of the site has an option in the menu at the far right called Print Page which will automatically download the print the PDF version.
Computers with Mac OS X have a program for opening PDF files. So do most computers running Linux. If you need a PDF reading for Microsoft Windows, we recommend Evince since it is simple and effective.
Watch out for PDF viewers which fail to place the accent marks properly over the vowels. For example until recently the PDF viewer built into Firefox placed the mark over the following letter. If this happens, upgrade your viewer to a newer version or use Evince instead.
The handouts, worksheets, and quizzes are also available for download in ODT format. ODT format is a standard format which can be opened by most modern word processors. This is what you should download if you want to modify one of the handouts before using it in your class.
If you need a word processor which can handle ODT format, we recommend LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice.
The audio recordings are available for download in both MP3 and OGG-Vorbis formats. Click on the menu button in the player bar and choose the format you want. You can play them on your computer or load them into most any portable music players.
If you wish to edit any of the audio files, we recommend Audacity.
All of the video files are in both MPEG 4 and Webm formats. Click on the menu button in the title bar of the video player and choose the format you want.
If your computer cannot play the video files, it might need a more up-to-date video player program. We suggest you install VLC. It is a high-quality general-purpose audio and video player. It is available in versions for Linux, MacOS X, and Microsoft Windows.
Some of the video files are played from Youtube. If you want to download these, you will need to install a Youtube download plugin in your web browser.