These
printed materials are hard to replace once they??™ve been lost, and companies rarely sell the
documentation separately.
The support section of a website is the perfect medium for delivering digital versions of
product documentation. The good news is that this material almost never needs to be
converted to HTML. PDF is ideal??”most users will be looking for a replica of the actual
printed material, which can contain copious screenshots, illustrations, symbols, variations
in typography, and complex layouts designed to convey the information accurately.
Best practices in long-format PDFs
Ordering a double tall nonfat latte at Starbucks requires more time than page layout programs
such as Quark Xpress, Adobe InDesign, or even Microsoft Word need to convert a
manual into a web-ready PDF. Chapter 8 covered some important tips for rendering short
marketing collateral as PDFs, including keeping the file size small, linking links, retaining
the integrity of text, and more. All of these practices still apply. However, product documentation
can be lengthy, and in order to keep file sizes manageable, apply these additional
practices:
Squeeze the compression just a little more: In Chapter 8 we advocated using the
preset [Smallest File Size] when rendering a PDF.
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