PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Alertbox)
PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption is the usual binary Nielsen treatise. I agree with him about embedded PDF in browser windows – that’s a bloody awful user experience.
But recently, I’ve been producing documents specifically *designed* for the medium and I’ve been really pleased with the results. They have decent omnipresent navigation and text entry etc. and they can be used offline.
The main strength of the PDF format is (as the acronym suggest) portability.The document gets uploaded and mailed around my client’s organisation in a way that perhaps a url wouldn’t. I’m not sure why, perhaps it’s a sense of ‘having’ something physical to move around.