[Sigia-l] Any guidelines/design patterns etc.. on when a downloadable format ( such as pdf/word/ppt) is appropriate compared to creating a webpage?

[Patrick Walsh]

Donna's list below is spot on. I would just like to add that personally I
get lots of Word documents for inlcusion in our intranet and its just so
much easier and less time consuming to produce a PDF, especially for
documents liable to change . However some work may be required on internal
navigation, e.g. accessing chapters through links and being able to get
back again  to the Contents page from any page in the document, before
turning it into a PDF.

I always keep the original document with the PDF version so that when
changes are required they can be quickly done and a new PDF version
produced. Its a lot quicker than creating a web page with the same
information,

Patrick C. Walsh,



>Create a downloadable if:
>- the thing in question is inherently 'point in time' and always will
remain so (like a big scientific report that was produced at a point)
>- you *absolutely* know that people will want to print it out and read
>it on paper (like a downloadable e-book)
>- the object is demanded by such a small user group that it would be
>ridiculously inefficient to mark it all up as a web page (but there is
>demand)
>- the whole context is important and splitting it up into bits would
>destroy its meaning

>Can you tell I do much of my work for government ;)

>Donna






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