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From:scot <scot -at- HCI -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Tue, 12 Mar 1996 09:38:30 +1100
>Actually, it's not the software that determine's anything. It's the settings
>the user makes (or more often doesn't make). Since 90+% of the web browsers
Oh come on Arlen, you're splitting hairs. The software, as determined by the
reader's settings, default or not, displays the document on the screen,
sensibly.
The factory defaults for any browser I've ever seen are perfectly reasonable
for most equipment that need to display the doucment. The only thing the
reader need do is resize the window so that its comfortable for them.
>For that matter, if the user decides to change all the tag settings to semi-
>random states, where's the gain?
There is none, to be sure, but that's the user's fault at least.
>On a small screen, Acrobat displays as much of the page as can fit on
>screen, with scroll bars that allow you to display the rest when you need to
>see it. Likewise, all browsers display what can fit in the available window,
>and leave the rest offscreen, to be scrolled to when needed.
Arlen, I'm beginning to think you don't actually read your own documents on
anything other than the hardware you design them on.
The golden rule with on line documents as far as I can determine is -
minimise mouse clicks! Every extra mouse click to get to the information
means lost readers. So now you've added a horizontal scroll bar to the
already annoying vertical scroll bar? Have you ever tried to read something
that you have to scroll both horizontally and vertically through? I would
rate such a document with a usability of about 0 (not quite, but nearly).
Aditionally Acrobat doesn't deal with information structure, just its look.
Put your doucments into SGML and then you can pour 'em out again at any
later date into the most useful format for a particular delivery medium,
paper, HTML, yes even Acrobat, and with the right tools this can be done -on
the fly- as the reader requests or displays documents. Put a document into
Acrobat and it stays there, in its proprietry format, forever. The Triumph
of Look over Content (oh well that just about sums up everything in the last
half of this century anyway, why should I be surprised?!).
