PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

I have found an article, "PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption" from the internet. The writer stated that “PDF is great for one thing and one thing only: printing documents." The writer also stated seven PDF Usability Crimes and quoted six user evaluation reports. All of them point out that compare with web page, PDF is not convenience for web viewing.

I agree with the writer that PDF is more suitable for printing instead of viewing. Since PDF has fixed the format of the document, user needs not to resize the document to fit the printing size. However, since PDF works like an image file, it’s hard for user to edit the content. Therefore it’s more suitable for distributing some documents that not expected the user to edit. Moreover, since it requires extra software to view the document. PDF file may not view in public terminal PCs, as the reader cannot be installed. Even though the reader can be installed, it takes long time to load the plug-in and the reader.

To conclude that in order to improve the web usability, PDF file should be avoided to distribute information that user may amend the content.