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About FastLane

Adobe Acrobat Reader Instructions

Use of SSNs for Organizational Management of FastLane

FastLane Site Map
FastLane Site Map

Using NSF FastLane

Detailed User Guide
For more detailed information on how to use FastLane, follow this link to the FastLane Proposal Preparation and Submission Guide (2MB PDF File)

Using Adobe Acrobat Reader for Printing and Viewing
Some FastLane applications provide the capability to download PDF forms for printing and viewing. In most cases this provides the ability to print official NSF forms at your location. In order to use this feature, Adobe Reader must be installed on your computer and the browser's helper application for file type "application/pdf" must be configured. The Reader can be obtained free of charge from this location: Free Software From Adobe If you encounter problems downloading Adobe Reader or configuring your Browser to launch Adobe Reader from within FastLane select: Downloading Adobe Reader and Configuring your browser to launch Adobe Reader

Use of SSNs for Organizational Management of FastLane
NSF has decided to use the Social Security Number (SSN) to uniquely identify individuals as registered users of the FastLane projects.

Characters Supported by FastLane
Because FastLane is a multiplatform application, only lower ASCII characters should be used when entering data into web text blocks. Lower ASCII characters are those in the 00 - 127 range. Upper ASCII characters should NOT be used, as they could translate to a different character or no character at all on other platforms. The Latin1 character set should be used when using FastLane applications. PDF files can contain Upper ASCII characters as well as pictures, graphs, and charts.

Recommended Client Capabilities
NSF's World Wide Web applications that require data entry require a Web browser that supports Forms. However, when using NSF applications that require significant data entry, it is highly recommended that a Web browser that supports the following features be used:

  • support for preformatted input fields (highly desirable, otherwise input fields will not be aligned on the form)
  • cut and paste into text fields
  • tabbing between fields
  • support for multiple submit buttons

Clients that provide these capabilities.

Netscape is copyrighted by Netscape Communications Corporation.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is copyrighted by Microsoft Corporation.

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The National Science Foundation
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Arlington, Virginia 22230, USA
Tel: 703-292-5111
FIRS: 800-877-8339
TDD: 703-292-5090
Last Modified:
April 24,'01 (SK)

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