Nate Klaiber

Posting PDF's and User Experience

“1. PDF is just like Flash — it’s a tool. Just as you don’t use a chain-saw to create a woodworking joint, you don’t use PDF (or Flash or whatever) when what you want can be created using HTML. If you’re using PDF because the people you work with are too stupid to learn how to use HTML, get new people. There are lots of unemployed folks who can do the job.”

I work for a book publishing company and absolutely love my job. My role as web developer/programmer couldn’t be a better fit with the team around me. However, I have found that sometimes it takes some ‘convincing’ or — in a nicer term — educating others on the team to understand usability impacts of things such as flash, PDF, and Javascript (when used improperly). Posting PDF’s has been one of those things. I absolutely despise posting PDF files directly to the website, I despise even more when I accidentally click on them myself. Though Safari will open them directly in the browser, I do not like being surprised by the link — which in some cases can lock up a browser (or the plugin is not found).

Now — I must say that, as a book publisher, many of our catalogs are available via PDF, which, to me, is a valid reason — and it is stated that it is a PDF and the file-size of the PDF — but, as a rule of thumb — if there are things that can be posted to the website in HTML, then they need to be translated to proper HTML. Yes, the catalogs look nice in PDF (print) — but we also have all of the book images and information stored in our database to be easily translated to the web. Author and writer guidelines? Have a direct link and a form for submission (still working on this one). Overall — I would say to steer away from PDF’s for many of the reasons listed in the links below (aside from the fact that they are just plain annoying!).

Resources

• PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption by Jakob Nielsen
• Chairs are for Sitting. PDF is for Printing. by Vincent Flanders