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Re: HTML Guides

Subject: Re: HTML Guides
From: Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 11:06:14 -0400

quills -at- airmail -dot- net wrote:

At 2:43 PM -0700 4/7/06, Heidi Colonna wrote:

Our shop is planning (in the near future) on moving from .pdf guides, mostly user guides, to HTML user guides.


You are about to forgo control over the appearance of the text, and exact placement of graphics. In fact, you lose all presentation control in moving to HTML.


I disagree. Get to know how to use tables and you'll have no problem placing graphics. Use a product like Dreamweaver and it'll make the job even easier.

You also lose any security you may have used in PDF files.


What security? Busting the security of PDFs is extremely easy. If you want security for your PDFs, set up a secure location on your website and religiously control access to it. Then again, why make it hard for your customers to gain access to your information. If you're worried about the competition, they've already got the info...it's called intelligence gathering and virtually any successful company does it. Financial and other really sensitive information should not be on the web anyway.

Additionally, you will lose any capability of searching globally within the document, unless you find and provide a tool that will do those searches. You will find that, depending on the tool you use, your automation for creating tables of contents and indexes will be limited.


I used ZOOM by Wrensoft and had no problems searching globally within documents or through the entire website. It even searches PDFs. It never affected automating the table of contents, etc., because it indexed the site after everything was uploaded. Of course, I used the professional version, but since it costs less than $75 and came with excellent customer service, it was well worth the tiny fee.

--

Al Geist
Technical Writing, Online Help, Marketing Collateral, Web Design, Award Winning Videos, Professional Photography
Voice/Msg: 802-658-3140
E-mail: al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com <mailto:al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>
URL: www.geistassociates.com <http://www.geistassociates.com> (online portfolio/resume)

See also:
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References:
HTML Guides: From: Heidi Colonna
Re: HTML Guides: From: quills

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