Forum Moderators: phranque
I'm typing slowly just to be sure I understand:
Jakob is going under your skin?
If so: this theme not interesting 'cause it's a Jakob recycling the obvious?
But im just one man and no one will listen. Which is just as well
There's always somebody listening ;)
I totally agree with you on Jakob Nielson. His articles are in fact simple rehashing of other studies, and really offer nothing new. In most cases his assertions are so narrow that he portends to apply a particular problem that occurs in one type of site to all sites, something that is just not feasible. In this case, PDFs have their place, and especially when they are done properly. I don't think the IRS could distribute their billions of forms and instructions each year (which absolutely have to be indentical to the forms people mail in) in any other cost effective way at this time. Not until they develop a way to submit taxes online, which opens up a whole new set of problems.
What a misunderstand and im glad we agree.
Off with Nielsons head
be friends, take JN's head, that's no wrong idea ...
But even JN might say something true, sometimes.
What makes him the master of all web usage?
Disagree we may, but JN is not just expressing opinion, he's espressing opinion that is based on decades of user interface testing with REAL users. It began w at Sun Microsystems where he was in charge of testing the user interface and continues today in the Nielsen Norman Group
Because of the NNG's extensive and ongoing work testing websites with a broad cross section of users, Nielsen's input is significantly better informed than the average pontificator we may run across.
We don't have to agree, but we should remember that he does have stats to back up his ideas.
I don't think the IRS could distribute their billions of forms and instructions each year...
Agreed, but they are intended to be printed out, not read online.
He may indeed, but recently it appears he's less concerned with publishing something useful and more concerned with continuously pushing his name out there.
Anyone with a motive can acquire stats to reinforce an idea. Ask any reseacher that's on the government payroll. Not sure about his motive for this one, just another one of those things that are patently obvious.
I've been conducting some studies on automobile usability. I've found that flat tires aren't conducive to a good driving experience and decrease overall performance of the automobile. Blacked out windshields reduce visibility and increase accidents and automobiles make terrible bass fishing boats. Next week I'll explain why screwdrivers aren't effective as hammers.
PDFs and screwdrivers rule!
In all seriousness, .pdfs serve a purpose, they seem to be extremely fit for human consumption. They're perfect for sending contracts, NDAs, manuals, reports, etc. At some point in time most of the people grumbling about .pdfs, including Nielsen, must have downloaded that Acrobat reader in order to view one online so I suppose they share the blame with those people that poorly implement .pdfs
I mostly enjoy the search feature, which is faster and more precise than any web site search feature. With the PDF my phrase is quickly found and I'm sent immediately to the occurence of that search. A quick key combo will wisk me to the next instance. With a site search I have to first go to a page of results, determine which result is actually what I want, and then search the actual page for the text I originally seeked. Of course, they are two different search models, but when viewing a document, I find the PDF way much more efficient.
My personal taste I suppose is a well crafted PDF for detailed documents such as manuals, instructions, reports, etc...
PDF format is one of the very few formats that can reproduce your brochures as the author intended it, on most printers, on most operating systems.
As chiyo stated it early on, they are made for printing, not viewing online.
We could all go down and come up with lists of products and services that are in use for something they are clearly not intended.
Nor does Mr. Nielsen suggests that PDF format in itself is bad. He simply points out that Webmasters (yes that would be you!) use this tool/feature/product is used incorrectly.
Do we forget Flash introductions? Or even further back the <blink>?
(wondering why i'd want to? to stand out from the crowd!... everyone would remember a site all in pdf... including login, forums, etc...)
It's also worthwhile to point out that Adobe has made great progress in resolving some of the problems with PDF that Jakob complained about. For example:
- The "bookmarks" feature allows file creators to provide an index to make it easier to navigate a large PDF.
- It is possible to start browsing a well-designed PDF without downloading the whole thing.
- Text copy-and-paste has been available in the last few generations of the Reader program (if the file creator did not prohibit copying) and the couple of versions have included "text column select" and graphics copy-and-paste features. In Reader 6, it is no longer even necessary to think about whether the text is in a block or column format, as the program handles this automatically.
(Please forgive me if I missed it, in all the complex cross-currrents)
Gateway Pages Prevent PDF Shock
Spare your users the misery of being dumped into PDF files without warning. Create special gateway pages that summarize the contents of big documents and guide users gently into the PDF morass.
[useit.com...]
Rather than force it to solve problems that it's much less suited for, let's reserve PDF for what it's good at: printing. It's no disgrace to be the world's greatest solution for a single problem, especially one that's as common and important as printing.
He still states usability and download times as problems, though he ignores bookmarks and "streaming" features as if they didn't exist. Maybe he's got Acrobat 2.0, in which case he needs to stop writing drivel and go upgrade. He even advocates a sort of splash page! That's real convenient. I think a small line of text beside a download link that says "786k PDF" is fine enough.
It just seems that whenever Nielson can't learn to use something properly he blames the technology and never gives a thought to the possibility of user error. In reality, he is just a victim of an ID-10-T error.
Absolutely! I initially used PDF merely to create formatted print files, then later realised I could make them available to many more people if I put them on my website for those who wanted to download.
>>Maybe some people have the time and resources to convert them all to HTML, but for most people its far more practical to go PDF in many circumstances.
Wrong way to go about things. Ignoring for a moment the problems of opening a PDF file in a browser previously mentioned in this thread, reading on a screen is not the same as reading on paper. You need a different layout for information on a screen than on paper. You also have different options. Have you ever tried implementing a hypertext link on paper?
I produce a newsletter. Subscribers have the option of receiving it formatted, in PDF, or unformatted, as email text. Some people subscribe to the one version, some to the other. I suspect this is about whether they prefer to read stuff on a screen or on paper. I think it's worth my time to keep both groups happy.
