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November 29, 2003
PDF Rules, OK?
Anil Dash has posted a short essay about how our choice of the tools we use to present information shapes the reader's expectations. Why exactly do so many people like receiving information as a PDF file instead of a web page?
It seems that the PDF format signifies something now, and it's something more than just user inconvenience. In addition to requiring the user to shift mental modes, ("I'm seeing something designed as a PDF now, this must be serious information ...") the requirement that a document either be downloaded or viewed in a context that's radically different from standard web pages seems like a subtle assertion of authority by a document's creator. The decision to switch from standard HTML to PDF isn't arbitrary, but it isn't based on technical requirements either. It's based on the value that an author wants to assign to the work, and it benefits from the still-prevalent, though rapidly fading, consensus that print work is somehow more inherently valuable and authoritative than web pages and other online content.I think there's something to that argument, but that it's by no means the major factor in the rise of the PDF file. The biggest advantage of PDF is that it can be used to create a single, self-contained file which can easily be emailed to colleagues and will basically be presentable regardless of the platform you try to read it on. The various options available to content creators allowing them to control how the recipients use the document may be important to some, but most recipients of PDF documents will barely notice any restrictions just as long as they're permitted to copy selections from the PDF in order to extract quotations to insert in their own reports. It's the presence of all the information in one easily accessible file that makes all the difference.
Posted by John at November 29, 2003 08:54 PM
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Comments
Does it say why PDF makes some people exceedingly irritated? Or is it just me?
Posted by: jo at November 30, 2003 02:52 PM
It's certainly not just you. The essay does suggest a couple of problems with PDFs:
- It can be frustrating waiting for one to download, then for the appropriate browser plug-in to load up and display the file.
- In some cases, there's no good reason to break the content into discrete pages.
- The tools for navigating your way around a PDF file don't work very well in a web-based setting.
- Some information presented as a PDF would work just as well as HTML/XHTML, and encoding them as PDFs just adds another layer of complexity to the process of providing users with content.
Posted by: John at November 30, 2003 08:41 PM
I can't add anything much to the Jakob Nielsen critique the essay cites. I run into .PDF a lot in my technical writing, and it's great for things like distributing printable brochures or documents where precise typographic layout is crucial. On the web, however, the change to a non-flexible interface is just irritating. Take the Broadcasting Standards Commission that quite unnecessarily puts its bulletins up as PDF, or this local website whose creator has decided that "long blocks of text are tedious to read on-line and so are better downloaded to be printed and read at leisure".
Posted by: Ray at November 30, 2003 11:53 PM
That last site you linked to is pretty much a textbook example of where you don't need to use PDFs. In the couple of essays I read there were no fancy graphics or typography - nothing more dramatic than the odd use of italics, as far as I can see - to justify reproducing the text as it would print.
Whatever he might say about not wanting to present big blocks of text to read online, I can't help wondering whether in fact the author is just used to doing his writing in a word processor and finds that the tools he has for producing PDF files are easier to use and produce more predictable results than those he has to hand for converting his text into HTML. (Come to that, if he's using Microsoft Word then he might have a point.)
Posted by: John at December 1, 2003 12:16 AM
Could be. But he's a commercial web designer and his written a book about it - not much of an advertisement if he can't/won't run up a simple text piece for HTML.
Posted by: Ray Girvan at December 1, 2003 10:04 AM