Grossly misused?
While Autodesk's pitch is targeted at a select group of drafting and design professionals, PDF has come under much broader attack from Web consultant Jakob Nielsen, a frequent writer on Web usability.
In a recent paper published on his Web site, Nielsen argued that PDF is grossly misused all over the Web. People are forced to endure long waits for PDF documents to load in Adobe's free Adobe Reader software and navigate through complex document structures, he wrote, even though the only time they really need PDF is when they want to print a document.
"It's very important to distinguish between printing and online information access," Nielsen said. "I have no beef at all with PDF as a vehicle to distribute information for printing. The problem is that is exactly what it's designed for; it's very page-oriented in the way it packages information. Something that's designed for printing is not going to be optimised for a computer screen."
Nielsen said he's conducted several studies of Web-surfing behaviour that show that improper use of PDF essentially breaks a site.
"Every time people would come across a PDF, they'd get lost or they couldn't find the information," he said. "Once they get into a PDF, you can pretty much kiss goodbye any hope of quickly getting what you want. The first thing that happens is that your computer kind of goes out for lunch and starts up this new application."
Nielsen advocates limited, clearly labeled use of PDF on the Web as a conduit for printing documents.
Adobe's Meyers doesn't argue with Nielsen's suggestion, just with the way he has delivered the message.
"When you get to down to it, he has some pretty good points," Meyers said. "But he's dumping it all on Adobe, which is like going to the W3C (Web standards body the World Wide Web Consortium) to get guidelines on how to design good HTML sites. There's a whole extended PDF community dealing with the design issues very well."
