Pdf vs html 5

There are also more variables in both the software used by the producers, and the readers. Taking the time to make them properly accessible and test does just that. Our publishing software is more of a controlled environment, so we have a greater chance of making sure our HTML pages are accessible to all. Comment by Josh Levett posted on on 18 July It makes the PDF editions of documents look like the preferred version as they get the official-looking cover preview.

In addition - could the GOV. Comment by Pete Hewitt posted on on 18 July Really interesting comments on some of the potential pitfalls and how to fix them but this is definitely the way to go. Is it essentially the same as a normal web page editing screen or can it suck content in from Word or such like and format from there?

As Higher Ed is another guilty party when it comes to endless PDFs this is something we'll need to tackle in the near future but working out the exact workflow will be a challenge. Comment by Jason Rogers posted on on 18 July Capturing content for use offline is more or less impossible. UK creates would be a first step. Remember that sometimes people are not online - and this is way more often then you might think.

Many, many people still prefer the printed page. They may even print documents to read long form to avoid the problems of extended screen use. UK does nothing to address this - trying to print the html pages results in comically large text with no attempt to format content in page form.

It also wastes reams of paper. The ethos for the site seems to focus on accessibility first - whilst forgetting just how unusable this can make content. Text size way is too big - this hampers readability rather than improving accessibility. Better yet, have a choice of style sheets to render the content at normal size rather than like an infants reading book. HTML, and worse, coupled with poor design choices like here, is nowhere near this level The PDF haters need to think about why people find them so useful.

There are definitely times when paper is best, and there is a place for PDFs where there is a proper reason for them we only listed the common ones. We have a responsibility to make GOV. UK available for everyone, and we work towards making it accessible for the greatest number of people. Large text is easier to read, but does require more scrolling.

On balance, it helps more people than it hinders. Comment by Harry Lund posted on on 17 July It's quite cumbersome to work through an intermediary on a document undergoing frequent revisions, so people tend to wait until the final version is ready before looking into creating an HTML version - at which point you can be timed out, so just go with the easy PDF version. I'd love to see lots more people trained up to be publishers.

And indeed I've been trying to sign up for the training myself, but have been told no courses are currently planned. Comment by Neil Williams posted on on 17 July Thank you for all of these comments. I agree with many of the pro-PDF points being made here. They have their uses, and where that's the case we would recommend publishing both in HTML and PDF and we will at some point add a feature that happen automatically from our publishing software. The problems come when PDF is the only format on offer - that's the behaviour I would love to confine to history.

Agree also with points on version control. I should have made it clear in my post that GOV. UK has features to track versions of HTML content, through the 'page history' at the foot of each page which includes notes about what has changed. We store the entire content of all past versions of HTML pages in our database and intend in future to make that whole rich history available through our API. The same is not true of PDFs, which can be overwritten using the same file name, without retaining history of changes other than by comparison with offline copies.

Comment by David Tallan posted on on 19 July We are starting to hear more and more frequently from librarians and archivists who are concerned about the long term impacts of this in terms of preserving the government record. They share the concerns that Nathan raised above that "HTML is not in any way a long-term archival format. What is GOV. UK doing to support long term preservation of the record?

Is the assumption that everything will always be accessible to researchers and scholars of the future through the current platform or its descendants? Or are materials regularly copied for long term preservation elsewhere? If the latter, do you find HTML a challenge for that? Comment by R K Hayden posted on on 26 July As noted by others, PDFs are good for reading offline. And by offline, I still mean on-screen, not on paper. For documents that if published as html would be spread over many html pages, a single PDF file also provides an easily searchable document.

You should be providing users with the option to access documents in a range of open formats. They're only not designed for reading on screens because the designers of the documents have chosen to make them so.

Whilst it is true that, as you say, "A PDF document that was created for offline use will not suit the context of the web and is likely to result in a poor user experience. Comment by Ian Taylor posted on on 17 July Our company did the same thing. However, it has taken away one crucial feature that PDFs support: offline reading.

Until you address this problem you have to accept that you've removed one route to accessing your material. Printing multiple web pages to PDFs hardly solves this, as you're assuming the user could collect all the material they need before they go offline. So yes, PDFs have their disadvantages but like many content and technology providers, your decision is based on convenience to yourself, and not the user. Comment by Adrian Barker posted on on 17 July From a user perspective, pdfs are often a lot easier and more convenient, particularly for longer 'published documents'.

Slow internet connections can slow down reading html. A well designed pdf can have good navigation. For offline viewing, saving web pages with multiple small files can be a pain.

Shouldn't there be good, clear version-control information easily accessible on both html and pdf? Clearly html is appropriate for most web content but sometimes a pdf is better from the user point of view. For reading on other devices, why not consider other formats like epub though there are problems with non-text.

Comment by John Norman posted on on 17 July My perspective as an end-user is that I have no particular interest in PDF per se, but I do want to be able to capture the state of a web page at a particular time especially if I am acting on the advice of that web page.

So I would urge you to continue to improve the printability of pages, which has the side effect of allowing many users to create PDFs from the print dialogue.

I checked this page and things are definitely improving. Print margins may be an issue still. Comment by Andy posted on on 16 July Bad idea. Version control is essential for government documents and official forms, which you can't do easily in HTML. PDFs print far better too. Comment by James posted on on 16 July Maybe people don't remember the time when all the world required Microsoft Word Documents. PDF was the thing that broke that monopoly.

PDFs arn't perfect but they provide a way of publishing something and people being able to actually have a copy of that information. Comment by Cyril Randles posted on on 16 July Many of your arguments for html seem to be based on your own needs for data and analysis. As a user I would like to be able download a time stamped version which is readable as a single document.

I would be happy to have a rubric built in to such a version which gives a creation date and version and a warning that updates may have taken place since the download. For legislation and regulations the ability to extract a version which is valid at a particular date would be valuable.

Comment by Paul Driver posted on on 16 July Why the new EU rules coming in next year are providing them with a fairly broad exemption is beyond comprehension.

For example, I've reviewed several papers that were theoretically and methodologically sound, but the authors had no idea how to present this interesting material so make it sound interesting.

These were bad papers because they were incredibly dull and poorly written. Similarly, how many times have you attended an ASA session to see an inspirational author speak in person for the first time and had your image of them shattered by horrible presentation skills and an utter disregard for the audience's boredom?

This profession requires a unique blend of analytical qualities and skill sets, involving sophisticated theoretical orientations, novel conceptions of data collection, a solid understanding of proper analysis be it q or q , and the ability to summarize all of that both orally and in writing with articulate, succinct, and captivating language.

Oh, and we also have to quickly adapt to different audiences, explaining what we've discovered to students whose highest degree is a high school diploma as well as seasoned experts in the field, along with our proverbial aunt in Iowa.

To address the question: All vehicles for visual aids can tempt the user with features that simply add clutter and distract the audience. I believe that presentations fall flat when the audience is paying more attention to what's happening on the screen than listening to the speaker.

I like PowerPoint because you can create very clean and elegant designs, and I've spent years stripping down my slide shows to have simple messages with smooth transitions.

I use PowerPoint shows primarily to 1. I also try to black out the screen at least twice during any presentation to forcibly shift the audience's attention away from the screen. For the most part, my PowerPoint slides are just giving me reminders about what I want to talk about extemporaneously.

The complexity comes from what I'm saying, not from a laboriously crafted paragraph on the screen that I then read word-for-word, and that's one way I've handled the audience-shift issue. Finally, a clicker should be standard equipment for every member of our profession. I can't believe how many people don't use them. Oh, and Prezi really does suck. If nothing else, their "subscription-for-life or you lose your presentations" business model is horrible.

While I generally agree with ebd2 also, yes! From them, a preferred software may emerge as that person's favored way of making their presentations clear and compelling. But that wasn't the question asked--the question was asked as though the presentation is a mechanical act alone what software is best is best answered as whichever performs the desired task best, not one in which there is a profession-wide agreement. Most browsers need to download the full PDF before they can render it, so anything larger will take a long time to download, and your readers might just hit the back button and leave rather than wait for it.

If you don't optimize the images, the PDF will be much larger and thus slower to download. Just because the content is in a PDF doesn't mean you can forgo good writing. And if the document is intended to be read in Acrobat Reader or some other online device, then the same rules for Web writing apply to your PDF. If the PDF is intended to be printed, then you can write for a print audience, but bear in mind that some people will still want to read your PDF online, if only to save paper.

Always Indicate a PDF Link Don't expect your readers to look at the link location before they click - tell them up front that the link they are about to click is a PDF. Even when the browser opens a PDF inside the Web browser window, it can be a jarring experience for customers. Usually the PDF is in a different design style from the website and this can confuse people.

That's really the sole benefit online. And is really what PDFs were designed for in the first place. Alas, that's usually not a major benefit in general if the goal is to disseminate information online. Personally, if there is a long established print-based workflow in place, maybe PDFs make a lot of sense for that particular solution, but in general, content should be in the native medium and on a web page, that should be HTML whenever possible.

The 1 problem I run into with most any PDF produced by a company is that they have failed to implement a workflow that ensures the PDFs are properly marked up to be accessible. The user interface can be developed independently of the logic, and it does not need to be coded. Having written business plans in Adobe InDesign before, despite it being a beautiful app and all, it's terribly complicated and a lot of the solutions to get the layout you need is simply too time-consuming and doesn't make any sense.

I like to think that its important to have control over the format and placement of graphic elements on the page. The design that has integrity, and is better suited to 'long form' articles that aren't just quick web snippets. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

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