We all know what a PDF file is, what it does and how useful they can be in particular instances. They are also a constant source of debate as to whether they are a good or a bad thing for websites which of course depends on an individual’s experience. Many have reason to use PDFs on their websites, but when you do happen across one, are they a help or a hindrance to a good browsing experience? This post briefly looks at some of the downsides of PDFs on websites.
Time
Having to wait for a PDF to download is a particular hate. The website itself may be a marvel in terms of easy navigation and quick-loading pages, but get to a slow-loading PDF and users tend to forget how good the site is and all that good work immediately goes out of the window.
Movement and Menus
Scrolling can also be a bit of a hit and miss affair with movements either being jerky or scrolling being too fast whether using the sidebar or the mouse wheel, although to be fair it has improved with newer versions.
Menus and command bars are different to standard browser layout which isn’t really a major problem in itself but nonetheless sometimes causes confusion amongst newer users.
Print or Screen?
There are some that believe PDF content is for printing only due to the fact that it’s hard to read on screen, but I’m not sure I agree. Obviously there are times when large amounts of information will be too much for a web page and so better off being contained to a downloadable file, however, there are users who have no problem reading PDFs on screen.
As I said, earlier, this post mentions just some of the negative issues, but PDFs do have a good side as well; something I’ll be looking at in another post.
Until next time.
