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Links vs Bookmarks

lschwang
Registered: Sep 24 2008
Posts: 8
Answered

I'm fairly new to Acrobat, and I'm putting together a quick one-hour class. We're going to talk about linking, among other things, but i'm trying to figure out why I would use a bookmark over a link and vice versa. They both 'link' to other locations, in or out of the document, including web pages. One is in the doc, one is in the navigation panel. Since i'm not a big end-user, could someone give me some reasons? Or is it just what a creator prefers? Sometimes that's the case in other programs, depending on what's being done. Thanks.

daka630
Expert
Registered: Mar 1 2007
Posts: 1420
Hi Ischwang,
Links vs Bookmarks? Why would it ever be either/or?
Other than traffic flow "round-about" PDFs to facilitate end-user travel through an eLibrary or PDF files holding simple content (a memo or whatever) PDFs without appropriate use of both is like driving in the rain with no wiper blades and the top down.

For predominately text based content it is, fundamentally, a usability issue. Good use of links and bookmarks make the documents easier to use than falling off a log in the water. Add catalog indexes and user wean themselves off paper versions at a remarkable rate.Of course, there is always the exception. The sample PDFs at Bob Connolly's site (pdfpictures.com),
for instance [url]http://www.pdfpictures.com/pdf/download.php?name=aruba-coolprograms.pdf[/url]
do just fine as is 8^)

Articles worth a read.

Duff Johnson's
[url]http://www.acrobatusers.com/articles/2006/08/bookmarks_why_how/index.php[/url]

Shlomo Perets'
[url]http://www.planetpdf.com/enterprise/article.asp?ContentID=best_practices_2_creating_ef&gid=6567[/url]From Adobe Education (which, by the way, is an *excellent* resource of "how-to").
http://www.adobe.com/education/webtech/CS/unit_site_dev2/ab2_bookmarks.htm

From Acrobat for Legal Professionals
[url]http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2008/03/pdf_packages_for_case_analysis_c.php[/url]

And an eclectic assortment of others.

[url]http://www.tentonbooks.com/videos/AcrobatBookmarksPt1.php[/url]
[url]http://www.tentonbooks.com/videos/AcrobatBookmarksPt2.php[/url]

[url]http://www.computer-advice.info/2008/08/30/adobe-acrobat-bookmarks/[/url]

Be well...

Be well...

lschwang
Registered: Sep 24 2008
Posts: 8
These links are very useful. I don't think I expressed myself well, tho. Why would you use one instead of the other. How do you choose? Thanks again.
gkaiseril
Expert
Registered: Feb 23 2006
Posts: 4308
I am assuming you mean links in the text of a document because links can be used as an action in many form fields and bookmarks.

This is pretty much a user decision. If you had a table of contents or index, one could not use any bookmarks at all if the user understood how to get to the TOC. I prefer both a TOC and bookmarks with the bookmarks including a link to the TOC and Index. Then the users has their choice.

George Kaiser

lschwang
Registered: Sep 24 2008
Posts: 8
Yes, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that bookmarks or links is a personal choice. Thanks very much for your input.