Re: Nielsen's Rating
Next, Nielsen admits that PDF is probably the best solution if the material must be printed. But the
DOH. PDF is designed for stuff that is going to be printed.
You can use fonts in a PDF that would be a strain on the 72 dpi output monitor but would look great at 300dpi laser printer.
Often PDFs are "formatted" in a magazine style -- which doesn't (usually) work on a monitor. Scroll down. Scroll back up. Scroll down ...
I routinely set PDFs to a "larger" percent than 100% if I want to read anything of them on the screen. And i have a high rez Apple, fwiw.
IMO, PDFs exist for material that will be printed and should be a secondary, not primary, way to display information on the Web.
Is there any search vehicle besides Google which indexes PDFs? If not, yet another reason to have them secondary.
As far as I'm concerned, HTML is a return to the dark ages of publishing, before it was recognized that typography and page design were the essential tools for improving readability and comprehension.
SO glad to have that opinion. I don't know you and I'm new to this list -- but that is a very arrogant, "designer-style" statement.
HTML is a *good* way to break free of hardware and software constraints imposed by the computer industry, ie, use MY product or else you can't communicate with anyone else.
It's a *democratic* medium and trying to impose "print" requirements (and ideals) to a variable-sized output device with fairly low resolution is quite insane. IMO. And counterproductive.
FWIW, I've seen just as many "unreadable" printed materials as "unreadable" onscreen ones. And if you are suggesting that PDFs are "readable" onscreen, I'd like to know what you are drinking. Or smoking. ;-)
Kathy
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References:
Nielsen's Rating: From: Dan Emory
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