Re: Jakob Nielsen Column -- PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

On Tue, 19 Aug 2003, William R Williams wrote:

> "For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It
> puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn't let
> go."

Thank goodness for that!  It needed to be said by someone who gets
listened to on usability.

> Is anyone willing to agree or disagree with this stance? Can anyone, as
> users, report definite problems with rendering PDF files?

I find it a constant problem, for the simple reason that it's grossly
inflexible.  I usually need to increase the text size, but even without
that a PDF viewer needs an uncomfortably wide window that precludes
having anything else of meaningful size visible.  At best it hogs the
desktop - and gives me a headache after the first two or three pages.

That's more a usability than an accessibility issue, though.

-- 
Nick Kew

In urgent need of paying work - see http://www.webthing.com/~nick/cv.html

Received on Saturday, 23 August 2003 13:36:49 UTC