The Misuse of the PDF
The PDF format has many merits for its use–standardized formatting, easy production and publishing. But it seems that today it is being abused as a means of bypassing having to write a web page formatted in HTML. More and more frequently I see companies forgoing this task of writing a web page and just tossing up their content in a downloadable PDF file. It is now so prevalent on the web that search engines such as Google have opted to add PDF content to their index.
When I worked at Harvard we frequently had clients ask us to just publish PDF versions of their Word documents because they didn’t want to foot the bill for us to convert it to a web page. Much of the time it was just a client liaison who didn’t want to spend more money but was told the information needed to be online. I can not fault them for not knowing how PDF files severely affect the user experience.
Organizations and/or web teams need to create and enforce a policy on the proper use of PDF files on the web. This is becoming a rampant problem which instead of attempting to promote awareness and manage it we are succumbing to defeat and poorly adapting to it.
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