Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Give web surfers an inviting HTML gateway into your PDF

When browsing the Web, I usually groan at the sight of a PDF link. You have probably experienced it, too. My research has brought me to this point where I must now download a large PDF before I can proceed. The problem isn't so much with the PDF file, but with my inability to gauge just how much this PDF might help me before I commit to downloading it.

The PDF author might have even gone to great lengths to ensure a good, online read, with nice, clear fonts, navigational bookmarks, and page-at-a-time byte serving for quick, random access. But I can't tell that from looking at this PDF link. Chances are that I'll click and wait, and wait. When it finally opens, I'll probably need to flip, page by page, through illegible text looking for a clue that this tome will help me somehow. I might never find out, especially because I have a dozen other possible lines of inquiry I am pursuing at the same time.

Don't let this happen to your online PDF. If your PDF has bookmarks, use this hack to create an HTML table of contents that hyperlinks every heading directly to its PDF page.

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