Topic: Argggh! PDFs... Gak! (Page 1 of 1)

In under 18 hours I've had two new redesign clients suggest that the best way to post their events calendars online is to just put up a PDF for people to download and print.

I need help in convincing them this is not the best practice. My opening salvo in this is:

<paste>
I advise against it because very few people will want to suffer through trying to read a PDF onscreen, and fewer still will print it. The web is about reading from the screen, not producing more waste paper.

PDFs are great for maintaining rigorous control of a document that *must* be distributed and reproduced just so -- forms, contracts, etc. They're not a very good substitute for web pages because, for starters,

--they are not interactive,
--they do not adjust for the visitor's environment (screen and computer) and,
--once it's on the visitor's computer and printed, you, as a content producer, can no longer update it.
</paste>

Any other agruments I missed?

"the most incredible feats are often accomplished by
those who have had the most incredible challenges"

brucew - You have pretty much hit on the major points. PDF is good for storing text in a fixed format. That is the stick now try them with a carrot - show them a few cool online calendars (Flash or DHTML preferably database driven) and described the rich set of features they could have on something similar if they give you the room to use your expertise and skill.

Never just focus on the negative issues.

Now if people have any links to such things drop them in here.

Emps

Thanks for the reminder about negativity.

I'm working on a couple of different approaches with rollovers, one with popups and two with static tables.

I just feel shot down. To top it off, while microwaving my dinner I was horrified by the recognition that the color scheme, typography and certain aspects of the layout look just like a Freezer Queen Deluxe Family Entree box.

Contents: One web site. Ready in less than 20 minutes. Do not prepare in toaster oven.

"the most incredible feats are often accomplished by
those who have had the most incredible challenges"

brucew: You could actually do something nice and simply with PHP and tables.

Start telling them that PDFs aren't as interactive and I could imagine their attention would wander - show them something cool and practical and they'll eat out of your hand!! [edit: possibly!!!]

Some ideas:
www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Calendars/

Emps

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 05-01-2002).]

I see your point. This is the way to solve it. Unfortunately I have no experience with PHP or MySQL. This could be the excuse I needed to look into it. Meanwhile, one of these other things will have to pan out and hold it's place.

quote:

---

show them something cool and practical and they'll eat out of your hand!!

---

Yes, but that would also require shifting from a frozen dinner-based design to something from the snack food category, which may in turn negatively impact the perceived value of the content.

"the most incredible feats are often accomplished by
those who have had the most incredible challenges"

brucew: I'd use it as an excuse to get into it. Mots people probably started by going: 'well I want to do X so I'll need to know enough PHP to get it done' and things went from there. Calenders should be pretty straightforward run through a few intro tutorials (do I really need to mention the GN?), have a go and then drop by server-side scripting if things go wrong.

I know nothing about this Freezer Queen you speak of (is it Rikki Lake??) and so I'm not sure if a move to snack food is a good or a bad thing (I'm going with bad from the context!!).

Emps

Emps: I've always needed to confront a practical application before learning something new. Learning from classroom theory and exercise for application at a later time just doesn't stick to me. I think it's because of the ADD.

Is there a difference between the Firepages and EasyPHP distributions? And, yes, I expect to make good use of the tuts on GN and make a nuisence of myself in the fora.

Fortunately, I have time. The client is a .org where things move at a gentler pace. The Executive Director has seen my point regarding the PDF, although I'm sure the fact that the events calendar flyer is printed on 11x17 has something to do with it.

We've decided that for a couple of months, they'll send me the Quark file and I'll cut the text from there to a static list. This will buy me the time I need to complete importing the existing content, put up the new design, learn the tools then produce the dynamic calendar.

A couple of those scripts you pointed me to, BTW, look like something that might be useful for another client who despises laptops and PDAs, but wants access to his calendar everywhere. He's currently killing trees with Outlook.

Regarding Freezer Queen = Ricki Lake? Not what I was thinking, but I see your point. It's a cheap brand of frozen dinners. See if you can spot the similarities between this (although the back of the box is what struck me) and this.

Thanks for your help so far!

"the most incredible feats are often accomplished by
those who have had the most incredible challenges"

[This message has been edited by brucew (edited 05-02-2002).]

brucew: Good to hear you've got time/room to learn - it should produce something interesting!!

I'm not sure of the specifics of those two but they usually come with pretty similar specs.

I think you will be fine - that is a nice golden yellow-brown and I'm sure not too many people would notice if you didn't point it out (you probably noticed because you've spent so long staring at it that it has burnt into your retinas!!

Emps

I would just like to point out that maybe your clients understand their buisinesses a little better than you do.

They are after all calendars. Do they NEED to be interactive? Do they NEED to adjust to the users environment? (if the user just wants to print it out, no). Perhaps the clients feel that once the event calendar is ready for publish, it no longer needs updating.

You are correct, nobody reads PDFs on screen, they print them. And it isn't a waste of paper if that's what you clients' customers want. I know that I would look at an event calendar printed out and taped to my fridge more often than I would go online to look at it.

All I'm saying is that you need to understand your clients' reasons for suggesting PDF. It may be what the customers have asked for. Perhaps they think PDF is the solution when something else would be better and then its your job to convince them of that.

All you told us were that they were event calenders and for us to give you reasons why PDF is bad. The problem with that is that PDF isn't bad (does exactly what its meant to) and could very easily be the perfect solution, but I don't know, I wasn't given enough information.

I say give them their PDFs and charge them extra. Shoot, I hope they want to update the PDF later because then you can charge them again!

Emps: Time certainly is on my side. They've taken over two months to get this far in the process. I've set the expectation of the end of the month for delivery of this phase. I hope it will take less than that. I've built in some room in case life intercedes.

The color and layout similarities hit me hard because I thought I was being innovative. They just spent beaucoup bucks on renovating the building and they're quite proud of the results (and rightly so). I scanned paint swatches from the interior and chose the colors from there (Benjamin Moore historical color series.)

So I'm keeping a Freezer Queen box on my desk to remind me that (almost) everything worth doing has been done before. And I hope they don't come after me claiming "prior art".

St. Seneca: The motive for the PDFs is expediency (read: save typing). "It looks good on paper. We'll just use this." In each case, (remembering there are multiple clients with the same idea) they send Word or Quark files to the printing firm, who in turn supplies the PDFs, so on the revenue side of things, PDFs aren't good for me either. And, I agree, PDFs have their place. I'm not sure this is it.

What I've sold is that rather than typing into Word, formatting it there and pasting it into Quark, is typing it into a web form, let PHP format it and, when the time comes for the next flyer, pasting from the formatted web page(s) into Quark. The practical doesn't always align perfectly with the theoretical, particularly when painted with such broad strokes, but it's that's gist of it.

Interactivity is a broad category. Sorry I didn't define it more closely. I was meaning more interactive from the updating side of things. Events are planned a ways in advance and not all at once. I'd like to have it so new events can go in as they become scheduled (rather than in bi-monthly batches) and allow for the inevitable changes--extra sessions, cancellations, new information, shifts in focus, typos, etc.--that come with it.

In each case, the clients have fairly large direct-mailing lists and even at non-profit rates, it's a significant expense. They also have underperfoming web sites, running around 700 unique IPs and 2,000 views per month. Average and median views per IP are 3.4 and 2 respectively. For one of them, referred visits represent over 85% of all visits.

The goal is to increase repeat visits through regular content updates and decrease dependency on direct-mail. I succeeded with just that at another .org (I seem to the king of .orgs around here, which suits me just fine). At that one, their routine document distribution is now almost entirely electronic, and yes, some of them are PDFs. I'm also aware, that in no case will the mailing of flyers ever go away. But we're hoping to decrease their size and frequency if not their quantity.

Fortunately for all of them, the target demographic is already highly connected and net savvy--writers, gays and lesbians, and surprisingly for me anyway, protestant ministers.

Does that flesh it out a bit?

"the most incredible feats are often accomplished by
those who have had the most incredible challenges"

[This message has been edited by brucew (edited 05-03-2002).]