PDF usability and best practices?

[Sharon Foster]

In Adobe Pro, a couple of things can be done to speed up the display of the
first page of a large PDF. Instead of being packaged as a single PDF with
many pages, the document can be packaged as a set of many PDFs, each one
comprising one page of the document. A large document can also be
"optimized for the web," which causes the first page to be displayed
immediately while the rest of the document is downloading. I didn't have as
much luck with this feature, but it may have been a problem with the
sequence of operations I was using.

Sharon
----------
Sharon M. Foster
Information Wrangler



On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Bob Rasmussen <ras at anzio.com> wrote:

> This is a partial answer, based on what I know of PDFs' internal
> structures.
>
> A key consideration is whether the PDF is "linearized". If it is, then the
> browser does not need to download the entire PDF before some of it (the
> first page) can be viewed.
>
> Other factors to consider:
>
> * Overall file size (as mentioned by someone else)
> * Number and type of embedded fonts
> * Whether it's "searchable". When pages of text are scanned, each is an
> image. When it has had OCR done on it, it becomes searchable (and could
> also be read aloud by screen reader software).
>
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2012, Wilhelmina Randtke wrote:
>
> > I am looking for recommendations or guidelines on best practices for
> > displaying PDFs on the internet.
> >
> > What I don't want:  I am not looking for ADA compliance.  I am able to
> find
> > that.
> >
> > What I do want:  I am looking for anything about ability to access the
> > document - so:
> >   -  How large a file size is acceptable?  (I anticipate U.S. visitors to
> > the project this is for.)
> >   -  How long in pages a document can be before it becomes overwhelming
> to
> > a reader?
> >   -  Any size constraints imposed by different PDF viewing devices and
> > connection speeds?
> >   -  Ways to represent a really long document - like a novel - and
> > represent it in meaningful ways in PDF format, without doing a single
> giant
> > PDF (and without becoming married to technology other than PDF-A and
> html)?
> >
> > Any pointers to guidelines or best practices on displaying voluminous
> PDFs
> > would be appreciated.
> >
> > -Wilhelmina Randtke
> >
> > ============================
> >
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> >
> > 2012-03-15
> >
>
> Regards,
> ....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.
>
> personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
>  company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com
>          voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
>            fax: (US) 503-624-0760
>            web: http://www.anzio.com
>  street address: Rasmussen Software, Inc.
>                 10240 SW Nimbus, Suite L9
>                 Portland, OR  97223  USA
>
> ============================
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> Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/
>
> 2012-03-16
>

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