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PDF manuals: the wrong paradigm for an online experience

Written by James Robertson, published November 19, 2008

Categorised under: Content management, Usability & user-centered design

Mike Hughes writes about the problems with PDF manuals. To quote:

Let me describe a familiar user assistance experience. A user installs a new application, and when the user wants Help, the application directs her to the user documentation on a Web site or CD-ROM. What the user finds there is a PDF file containing the manual—or a collection of PDF files, representing a library of manuals, including a user guide, configuration guide, troubleshooting guide, and various references. And the layout of each of these PDF manuals is exactly the same as if it were a printed book. This raises an interesting question: If we’re giving manuals to users to read online, why do we design and write them for paper?

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  1. By Analog Thinking in a Digital World | Notes From the Lizard Lair on January 9, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    [...] of those habits is this:  we offer pdfs to people to provide help online.  As Jack Vinson and James Robertson point out in their blog posts on the topic, from manuals to help files to systems documentation, [...]