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Subject:pdf vs. html From:Diane Kirsten-Martin <dkmartin -at- CELLNET -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 16 Jul 1998 13:58:58 -0700
I'm new to the list. I'm looking for studies of PDF vs. HTML for online
documentation. I've been chartered with doing a comparison test on
usability issues and user preferences for a new documentation set we are
currently working on. The user's guides will be created in FrameMaker. I'm
not yet certain whether in the final act we will be putting the entire new
document set or just some subset of this online, but I can say at this
point that it's probably equally easy for our pubs department to turn the
documents into pdf or html. The decision to do one or the other will be
based on user preferences (our users are internal).
I'm thinking, for the test, of putting one small user's guide--in pdf and
html--on a cd, enclosing Acrobat Reader with Search, another search engine
for the html?, some test questions, some check boxes as to preferences.
The thing is, I want it to be a fair test, but I'm pretty sure that the
users just want HTML because they think pdf is new, strange, hard to use...
Any help on this issue, either on the usability test or the question in
general will be appreciated.
