ChangeThis.com promotes screen-friendly PDFs that help users avoid clumsy scroll and zoom maneuvering.The continuous waltzing of fingers across the keyboard or mouse pad
that's typically required to navigate vertically oriented PDF files
on a horizontal (and sometimes too small) computer screen is enough
to make readers consider enrolling their digits in dance lessons.
Noah Weiss and his ChangeThis.com publishing project colleagues sympathize. Working on the PDF-based publishing venture inspired by author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, they've taken steps to improve
the choreography and reduce the stress.
In a Weblog entry titled "Doin' the PDF shuffle," Weiss explains the
site's challenge in deciding to publish its reader-submitted content
as interactive PDF documents. "Reading a PDF is often like dancing
with an awkward partner: You need to constantly shuffle left and
right, up and down, trying to readjust to something that just doesn't
fit," Weiss wrote.
"The problem with most PDF documents is that they're just scanned-in pieces of paper, meant to be read from top to bottom on a 8.5-by-11 sheet," Weiss says. "But computer screens are wider than they are
long, so either you need to zoom out so far that the text causes an
early onset of glaucoma, or you need to rock the scrollbars back and
forth at the end of every sentence."
In his long-running "Alertbox" column on usability, HTML-design guru
Jakob Nielsen has helped fuel a dislike of—if not a disdain for—using PDF for anything other than ink-on-paper publications. Nielsen
has authored at least three such diatribes during the past few years,
including "Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading," "PDF: Unfit for Human
Consumption" and "Gateway Pages Prevent PDF Shock."
Nielsen has continued to send periodic warnings, despite increased
functionality of Acrobat in successive version releases, greater use
and acceptance of PDF, and the free availability of the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
"PDF is great for distributing documents that need
to be printed," Nielsen wrote. "But that is all it's good for. No
matter how tempting it might be, you should never use PDF for content
that you expect users to read online."
PDFs don't have to be an Internet blight. Click here to read Don Fluckinger's column.
While many of the flaws he cites are the fault of PDF authors rather
than shortcomings inherent to the file format, Nielsen has helped
perpetuate the print-only mindset.
The team of interns hired last summer by self-described agent of
change Godin to work on his ChangeThis project was not deterred by
naysayers or influenced by prevailing practices.
Designer Phoebe
Espiritu took a different approach to publishing in PDF, more in
keeping with the project's mission.
Weiss notes in a project-intro blog item that "our
concerned-with-eyestrain, hater-of-scrolling, lover-of-usability
designer Phoebe created a PDF format for Manifestos that's actually
meant to be read on-screen. It's horizontally oriented and each page
is designed to perfectly fill the screen from end to end."
With input from PDF proponent Godin, Espiritu designed a template for
publishing the project's carefully crafted content—each accepted
topical submission is eventually posted for download as a separate
manifesto—aiming for optimal on-screen viewing while also being
suitable for printing in landscape mode.
In a note to readers
titled "Our PDFs Don't Suck," the project's team boasts that each
manifesto—including its own ChangeThis Manifesto (here in PDF form) outlining its
mission—is based on "a layout that is a joy to read."
Next Page: The project chose PDF for its versatility and its roots in publishing.
Why did ChangeThis.com choose PDF over alternative publishing methods, such as XML or HTML or blogging?
"Based on our publishing goals, PDF emerged as the most the suitable format," said Espiritu. "Our goal was to develop a 'viral' product—something that could be passed along easily both on- and offline—while upholding the craft and integrity of traditional publishing.
Acrobat's ubiquity and Adobe's long tradition of developing
publishing software made PDF the winner."
One of the goals, she said, was to "create a mediated system for
recognizing up-and-coming writers," and to walk them through a
process similar in most respects to traditional publishing.
The process includes submitting a topic proposal and, if accepted, working with an editor and copy editor to produce text that is carefully crafted, including exact line endings and page breaks and provocative pull quotes—a key visual feature of the design.
ChangeThis authors are provided an MS Word template with stylesheets
developed by the team. Once completed and returned, the text is
saved to Rich Text Format, then imported into an Adobe InDesign
template that directly mapps the Word stylesheets. Minor manual
tweaking in Acrobat is the final step. The process takes only a few
minutes, Espiritu said, including automatic conversion of URLs to
active Web links.
BC Pictures finds a Web audience receptive to large, rich-media PDF downloads. Click here to read more.
Resisting the initial temptation to "geek up" the PDFs by utilizing a multitude of the bells and whistles available in Acrobat, Espiritu said they settled on a few key navigational elements—built into the template and appearing on every page of every manifesto—that support the mission and the easy-to-navigate theme.
For example, to further the goal of having people pass along manifestos they like, each manifesto features active mail-to links that launch an e-mail application, sending the PDF as an attachment.
One of Godin's primary objectives, Espiritu said, was to get
people to focus on the content. The technical solution was to set the
full-screen display preference in Acrobat, so that each PDF
page is the only thing visible. A small icon reminds people that they
can tap the Esc key to return to normal viewing.
As another aid to online reading, Espiritu wanted to add a slight
background tint to reduce the glare. However, when a reader decides
to print a manifesto, the background color should not print.
Espiritu, who had limited experience with Acrobat prior to the
project, said she was pleased to discover that so-called "content dimming" could be achieved with the software's built-in background suppression capability, one of many handy features that she said are not self-evident to most users—and thus are underappreciated and
underutilized.
The ChangeThis project is temporarily on hiatus, with the staff
reduced from the original four interns to just Weiss and Espiritu at
present. They are still accepting author submissions and expect to
begin production of new PDF-only manifestos in the near future.
"I do want to help spread the word about PDFs," Espiritu said.
"They're not evil, evil, evil!"
