1. ➶ Tom Morris: Unprintable PDFs won't save the planet

    Amazing Wikipedia find from Tom Morris: the “WWF” file format.

    It’s a file format designed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (what used to be the World Wildlife Fund) as an environmentally-conscious document format.

    Wha—? An environmentally-conscious document format? That’s an object and a property that you don’t see going together if you are sane. It makes about as much sense as saying your yoghurt is low voltage or your toothpaste is skintight.

    An environmentally-conscious document is one that actively prevents you from printing it. It turns out a .WWF file is just a PDF file with “don’t print” security flag toggle on.

    Of course, if you choose to use a non-Adobe PDF reader such as GhostScript (which ignores the ‘Don’t Print’ security flag) it’ll print just fine.

    Monday January 3rd, 2011

  2. Safari and Inline PDFs

    When Mac OS X Leopard finally arrived on the scene, the inline-display of PDFs without the need to install Adobe’s ghastly Acrobat Reader was one of my instant-favourite features. However, it’s not perfect.

    At the day-job we provide all our documentation in PDF form right now (debate away: we’re always listening) and it never ceases to amaze me, when talking to customers, that this Safari feature actually confuses and misleads them. You’re probably chortling away at how silly that may sound, but think, for a second, of what you’re presented with: a large grey area where nothing happens for a few moments (or minutes if you’re on a highly-contended broadband connection). It’s not as if there’s no feedback given: there’s the address bar’s progress bar, and perhaps the status bar below the Safari window if you’ve enabled it, that show exactly what’s going on. But I couldn’t help finding it curious that users’ attention is so vividly drawn by the main browser view, and the fact that it’s quite common for people to miss the fact that PDFs are, in fact, loading.

    It’s worth pointing out that Acrobat Reader - for all its many sins - at least provides an indeterminate spinner to show that something is going on. I can’t help but feel that Apple could at least match that.

    Tuesday January 27th, 2009