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I personally don't like PDFs very much -- the interface alone feels troublesome. Just like Photoshop, Adobe developed Acrobat for print and then adapted it to the web -- but I don't think the transplant is nearly as comfortable so far. Still, PDFs do serve a purpose.
PLUS
Portable over various OS
Good market penetration
File will print properly
Can minimize big files
Can be secured against changes/printing
Opens in the browser (is this really a plus?)
Internal links
MINUS
Many failed downloads (why is this?)
Long wait when visitors may expect speed
Awkward feel to the interface
Newbie confusion
I think any success I have with the Amazon Honor System is because I allow contributors to download a PDF version of the site's content (content = everything except the advertising).
I choose PDF because of the security, i.e. no one can copy from the PDF to post the all the content in their site. But now I wonder if this is really such an advantage? Someone one could still post the entire PDF on a site. And it's being in PDF might be a turnoff for some people.
I make the PDF from an HTML document (which is automatically generated, but which I never place on the website) -- and I notice that the PDF is very much larger in file size than the HTML it is made from. Is there something I should try to make the PDF smaller? Or could it be better just to let contributors have access to the HTML (which they could to their harddrive if they want). Are users comfortable with downloading a HTML document (or even a ZIP of an HTML document) and storing it on their harddrive and then viewing it with their browser (instead of seeing it on the WWW)?
Any thoughts? Thanks.
Ed
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(edited by: tedster at 10:29 pm (utc) on Feb. 21, 2002)
> Someone one could still post the entire PDF on a site.
True, but you can catch that with Google pretty fast I would imagine.
> And it's being in PDF might be a turnoff for some people.
I assume people are printing it for their recipe collection -- that's what PDF is great at. I think you've made the wisest choice.
This next comment is a bit off topic, Ed, but you might also consider charging a set fee, and perhaps throwing in a few bonus recipes into the PDF version. I know that offline (classified newspaper ads and such) people are very willing to drop a few bucks for interesting recipes. A few years back I had a friend who made pretty good money selling recipes through the tabloids.
On the topic of PDF file size (nice post there nonprof_webguy) I'm usually in mystery land. Sometimes PDF file size is bigger than the .doc file, and sometimes it's smaller. Can't see why. However, that insight about embedded fonts on blank lines is a winner!
I often get better results converting to PDF from PageMaker files than I do from similar Word files. If you have PageMaker on hand it's worth a try, since both are Adobe they work quite well together.
Problem is, though, that I can't get PDFs to print the same size as Word docs... They come out shorter. Fonts or line spacing seems to change. A group of lines that measures 225mm on a Word doc comes out 175mm when printed in a PDF. Changing font size isn't the answer... messes up line breaks etc. Is this a common problem, and is there a work-around?
I do have access to PageMaker but have never used it. But I have a simple question:
I find that by making a PDF from a HTML file I can preserve the page-to-page hyperlinks and have some navigational hyperlinks at the top of the file. I would think that the internal hyperlinks are a big plus in a large (~300 page) PDF document. If PageMaker doesn't support hyperlinks, then I don't think I'd do it.
