Using PDFs appropriately

Today I ran across a short article about PDFs and using them on the web which I thought would be good to share with my Web Manager friends.

Read it! But if you absolutely don't have the time, here's a pithy quote from it that captures the essence: "No matter how tempting it might be, you should never use PDF for content that you expect users to read online."

So, what are PDFs good for?

• Providing a format for documents that doesn't rely on proprietary software
• Forms that need to be filled and printed
• Large documentation/handbook-type documents that might need to be stored on a personal computer or printed

What happens because of bad PDF use?

• Poor accessibility (how available your content is to all users, including those with disabilities)
• Poor user experience (users have to switch behaviors from web to document)
• Opportunity for non-web copy, inconsistency in brand, outdated documents

Are you an abuser? Take a look at your pages. Are there PDFs that could be web pages instead? Look at your File Manager. Is it littered with outdated PDFs?

 

 

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Posted at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)