At my work, I've been asked to develop some guidelines for creating usable, accessible PDF files. Today I reviewed some of my recommendations with my manager, who questioned why I recommended having the PDF open with the bookmark panel to the left.
I replied that is was a usability feature, much like a table of contents in a book. It enables the user to see the sections of the PDF, and to easily navigate to sections within the PDF.
My manager said he has not seen the bookmark panel in over 95% of the PDF files he has opened from the web, and commented he thought only users with disabilities made use of bookmarks. I pointed out it wasn't hard to create bookmarks, if the source document was structured correctly (using styles within Word). He agreed, but felt that opening the PDF file with the bookmark panel was not necessary, and would cause more confusion to website visitors.
My manager said he wanted to see the statistics on users of PDF files and whether bookmarks improved usability. I was a bit surprised at the request, but perhaps I'm missing something obvious.
So now I'm searching the web for usability studies on PDF files. Any advice?
Many users who post PDFs on the web know very little about the interactive features of Acrobat. The bookmarks, articles, destinations, thumbnails, comments, etc are more usability features for all than they are special accessibility features like tagging and reading aloud, reformatting that can make PDFs more access able to visually impaired users.
See [url=http://www.pdfzone.com/c/a/Document-Management/Add-ReaderFriendly-Touches-to-Your-PDFs/]Add Reader-Friendly Touches to Your PDFs[/url] by Pariah Burke from Dec 14, 2005 and [url=http://www.pdfzone.com/c/a/Document-Management/Adding-ReaderFriendly-Touches-to-PDFs-Part-2/]Adding Reader-Friendly Touches to PDFs, Part 2[/url] for even more suggestions. Some of these go as far as helping Internet search engines find your PDFs on the web or let your intranet search with PDFs on your intranet site.
Also see [url=http://www.planetpdf.com/enterprise/article.asp?ContentID=best_practices_2_creating_ef&gid=6567]Best Practices #2: Creating Effective Acrobat Bookmarks[/url] or [url=http://www.planetpdf.com/enterprise/article.asp?ContentID=adding_articles_to_your_pdf_wi&gid=6044]Adding Articles to your PDFs with Acrobat[/url].Some people see the computer as just a 4 function calculator and nothing more. I once was in a computer application design class and the instructor said the micro computers, the 8 bit hobbyist devices prior to the IBM PC, would never amount to anything more than toys. Well Apple is still in business and programs like VisiCalc have spawned many other spreadsheet programs like Lotus 123 and Excel that are now standard office tools and are even available on PDAs.
You should try to get some of the Acrobat Evangalist like Ted Padova, Kurt Foss, Dov Issacs, Duff Johnson, Leonard Rosenthal, or Carl Young that have been encouraging users to make use of Acrobat's features for decades, or at least over 10 years.
George Kaiser