Forum Moderators: open
Is this possible?
<a href="http://www.adomain.co.uk/path/to/pdf/document.pdf">Code of Conduct</a>
You could link directly to the pdf hosted on someone else's domain, or you could save a copy in your webspace and link to that.
The end user will need to have acrobat reader installed for the PDF to open automatically. If they don't have it they can download it for free from Adobe's website.
Remember as Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering says, "The Back Button Is The Button Of Death".
You may want to open that PDF file in a new window. If not, you may lose the visitor if you hope they would come back to your site.Remember as Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering says, "The Back Button Is The Button Of Death".
Please don't. I don't use the Adobe Acrobat plugin so my browser downloads the pdf and then opens it in Acrobat Reader. If you specify the pdf is to be opened in a new window, I end up with a new, blank, useless browser window. This annoys me.
When I use a PC with the Acrobat plugin and you specify the pdf is to be opened in a new window, I end up with a browser window with no way to get back to your site. The 'back button of death' is greyed out. I may not see the old browser window underneath until way after I've gone to another website.
If I want something to open in a new window, I'll ask for it, thank you very much.
Jon.
pdf files can be large and sllooowwww downloading. It is considerate design to note by such a link that it is
If the pdf file is large and the information is important you may want to add an html version for slowpokes like me.
If I want something to open in a new window, I'll ask for it, thank you very much.
Anytime that I risk losing my visitor needlessly, they are going to get a new window. Very often, when people are done with the .pdf, they don't use the back button - they close the window. I've had similar problems with slide shows. When they've seen enough, they close the window. They don't intend to, and I don't know what the triggering factor is, but I've seen it for myself many times.
If I provide a link to a great resource that my users my want to explore - new window. Don't want 'em getting lost now:) [Not all outside links - just the ones where I know they could easily drift away.]
...are there any benefits though as I can't see how they can be indexed. We are only doing it in this case as this is how the code of conduct (which we have to display) is packaged if yo like.
I can understand why you wouldn't want your code of conduct to be editable, however I don't consider document write-protection to be a valid reason to choose PDF over (X)HTML.
I think you should mark up your document as (X)HTML, in one page if it's small or across several pages under a menu page if it's big. Style it with CSS, give it full metadata, make sure it's accessible, and if you think people might like to print it you can use the CSS @media feature to make it look great when printed.
I will try and stay away from them if I can in the future though
Thanks, Peter
I can't see how they can be indexed
You mean by search engines? Google fully indexes PDFs. I've done searches and found documents where the search term is way way down a pdf document.
If simple linking does not work (sends gibberish or nothing at all), it means that you have to set Apache to send the proper mime type information when sending a PDF.
No need to go into it, since usually it won't be a problem, but I have had to add the mime type declaration in .htaccess on at least on shared server. If it happens to you, don't despair just post back!
A more accurate advice would be to make the information available in html, but you can put it ALSO in pdf. I am in the printed-pub industry, but we also do websites. We sometimes build newspaper ads for our clients, which they also want online. You can put the info online in html with a link to a web-compressed pdf of the pub, which have more graphical-potential than xhtml (I don't want to start a debate here with that sentence though, just my opinion!)
Consider too that the PDF with all graphical elements is sometimes done already, why would you want to reformat it exactly the same in xhtml? Put the main info in xhtml, then add a link to the original pdf.
I see potential for fact sheets etc which are already available with the good graphics etc as you say.
Absolutely. Don't you ever get pdf hits on Google? A huge number of my searches come back with PDFs. Not only that Google gives you the option to view as HTML. Can't believe you havent' come across this before. If you want a demo, try this search
information architecture filetype:pdf
MrCrowley,
I think the main thing people object to about PDFs is that you lose all your site navigation unless you build it into your PDF, which most people do not do, so they tend to be orphan pages.
