Optimizing
PDFs for Web Content
 Acrobat
7 Professional’s Optimizer (found under the Advanced
menu) is one of the keys for making online PDF content
ready for deployment. Failure to use this vital tool
to "polish" a PDF before uploading to a website
is to risk confusing users and reducing the perceived
quality of your content with delays, oversize files,
poor appearance, and so on.
We've
prepared some screen-shots of the Optimizer showing
some reccomended settings for Web
Content Optimization (PDF, 695 kb). Feel free to
vary these to meet your needs. You'll find these are
good "average" settings for most web- content
intended PDFs. Clearly, if the images in your files
require very high resolutions or minimal compression
due to a high level of detail, then by all means, alter
these settings to suit, and save your new profile.
Far
more than merely ensuring Fast Web View is enabled,
a key function of the Optimizer is to ensure that your
PDF is a 1.4 specification file, fully compatible with
Acrobat 5.0. Without this setting users with Reader
or Acrobat 5.0 will get a nasty message about “out
of date” software each and every time they open
your file, until they update to the latest version of
Reader or Acrobat. For conventional web- content, there
are relatively few reasons to use higher-specification
PDF files, and unless you want to gratuitously tick-off
and/or confuse those with older versions of the software,
then leave the Optimizer set to Acrobat 5.0 compatibility.
Finally,
be sure that Optimizing is the very LAST thing you do
to the file before posting. Any other edits or saves
in Acrobat 7.0 will result in automatically “upgrading”
the file to 1.6 specification – Acrobat 7.0 compatibility.
This means you’ll have to re-Optimize - again -
just to get the compatibility back to 5.0.
There
are exceptions, of course. If you need or prefer to
use JPEG2000 compression (there is a file- size advantage
with color images), more recent versions of PDF security,
or fancy formatted bookmarks, you'll need to select
Acrobat 6 compatibility at a minimum. But you've been
warned! Many users are still on version 5.0.
In
future issues of PDF News and Tips, we’ll discuss
the specifics behind some of the Optimizer settings.
When
to use a PDF, really
 Many
users want to when to use a PDF and when to use something
else, like a Word file, or a plain-text email. There
are no hard-and-fast rules, but there are some good
general guidelines.
Use
a PDF when:
- You
want to deliver a print-ready document
- You
want to insure that every recipient can refer to the
exact same document
- You
want to insure that the document cannot be (easily)
changed, or its contents extracted
- You
want all the document components (text, fonts, images,
etc) delivered as a single downloadable package
- You
want to minimize the perception (and reality) of potential
for virus transmission
- You
want to include attachments within a single file
- You
need to ensure your document is as small as possible
Don’t
use a PDF when:
- Your
document would work just as well in plain text (ie,
an email)
- Your
document is intended for editing or content extraction
(say, as part of a drafting process)
There
are, needless to say, a wide variety of views on the
exact propriety of using PDF files. For some interesting
(and somewhat controversial) reading on this point,
check out this
article by Joe Clark, who is, among other things,
a member of AIIM's PDF/Universal Accessibility Committee.
Corrections
Department: Bookmark Navigation
In
October's Newsletter, we stated that one DISADVANTAGE
of bookmarks was that they could not provide navigation
to a location within a page, but could only take the
screen-reader user only to the top of the requested
page. This is incorrect - or rather, it is possible
to avoid this problem when Bookmarks are created the
right way.
Sean
Stewart, of ARTS PDF,
wrote in to point out that Bookmarks can point to a
specific view on the page, and need not point to the
whole page, or the top of the page.
Bookmarks
created from the document structure (tags), or bookmarks
created by a content-sensitive engine such as ARTS
PDF Aerialist (a well-deserved plug for Sean’s
product!) will point to the heading and align the heading
at the top of the page pane. (A Caveat: This doesn’t
work for a bookmarked heading near the bottom of a page
when single page view is set). You can also set specific
views for bookmarks manually in Acrobat, but it's a
bit of work.
Thanks,
Sean! We appreciate any and all corrections offered.
More to the point, we are glad to have this opportunity
to explain this vital detail about PDF bookmarks!
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