Why PDFs Are a Bad Choice for Manuals
The Portable Document Format (PDF) was invented long before the World Wide Web became the de facto standard for publishing information, and to be honest, it has always been an odd guest in the house. Let us count the ways.
PDFs require a PDF reader
While they are preinstalled on many devices, PDF readers take the user out of the original context by opening a separate application or view mode with different controls for scrolling, zooming, and finding content. This can be confusing, especially for older and non-technical users.
PDF is (literally) an inflexible format
When you make a resource available over the Internet, you can never know the size and orientation of the user’s device screen. An A4 portrait-format manual with 9-point body text may be great for large screens and printing, but it’s impossible to read on a smartphone without pinching and zooming.
In a PDF, content and presentation cannot be separated
This means that users can’t enjoy all the nice features that modern web browsers offer, such as reader or night mode. They will have to live and work with the feature set of the currently available PDF viewer.
PDF sections can’t be targeted
The World Wide Web is granular: Brands can direct readers to websites, pages on these sites, sections on pages, or (using so-called text fragment links) even to a single highlighted word or sentence. This granularity is extremely useful for product manuals, but it’s not available with PDFs. A support specialist who wants to offer more than “It’s in the manual” would have to find the information himself, note the page and section, and hope the user will find it.
PDFs aren’t great for processing in Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) present a significant opportunity for brands seeking to make information about their products and services accessible on the web. Well-formatted HTML is a valuable source for LLMs and LLM-based search engines. However, complex PDFs are much harder to “digest” for an LLM because the presentation of content in such a PDF may not necessarily reflect its logical / semantic structure. And as they say: garbage in, garbage out.
PDFs can’t easily be translated
An English PDF is just that – a “frozen”, page-based presentation of English content. A user who wants to read a PDF in another language must go through a multi-step process: Select the content, copy it to the clipboard, access a translation service such as DeepL, paste, and then select the target language. HTML content, on the other hand, is easy to translate, both “upstream” by language service providers and using in-browser machine translation engines.
PDFs are an additional challenge for users with disabilities
Navigating PDFs can be a challenge for users with cognitive, physical, or sensory impairments. Extracting content from a complex PDF to make it more accessible for target groups with special needs is very difficult.
And all these problems can multiply.
Consider a user with poor eyesight who would like to learn more about your products from an English-language, page-sized PDF manual, but only has a smartphone and a limited understanding of the English language. The more barriers you can remove for him, the more likely he is to make a purchase and enjoy the post-purchase experience.
PDF versus HTML manuals – summary
| Feature | Support in PDF | Support in HTML |
|---|---|---|
| Document components modification (presentation or content can be transformed after loading.) | no | great |
| Granularity (deep linking to content fragments) | no | great |
| Post-publishing translation (“Downstream” / in-app machine translation) | not possible in most viewers | supported in all modern browsers |
| Portability (Document can be downloaded and archived.) | great | Simply save as PDF |
| Print-ready (End users can print document.) | solid | solid |
| Responsive display (Document content will adapt to viewport size and orientation.) | no | great |
| Responsive printing (Content will adjust to the local printer’s paper size.) | no | solid |
| Search engine optimization (Content is indexed and “understood” by search engines.) | depends on source doc structure | great |
| Support for assistive technologies (Visual enhancements, screen readers, etc.) | depends on reader app, usually poor | solid / extensible |
| Use in large language models (LLMs can process and use content in answers.) | depends on source document structure | great |
So what are the alternatives?
Creating manuals and quick guides using web technology leverages everything that HTML, CSS, and JavaScript have to offer:
- Rich semantic markup that can be processed by browsers, search engines, and large language models
- Separation of content, structure, and logic, allowing for direct access to and transformation of document elements
- Support for assistive technologies (screen readers and alternative display modes such as high contrast, readability, and night mode)
- Responsive presentation that adapts to the viewport size, resolution, and orientation
- Machine translation of all text content in all modern browsers
- Separation of screen and print-optimized styles, rivaling everything that word processors and DTP applications offer: transparency, variable fonts, ligatures, Grid and Flexbox layout, pagination control for print media, blend modes and filters, color management, advanced gradients …
As they say: Information wants to be free.
We can help your brand make its product literature accessible to everyone, on all kinds of devices and in all relevant languages.
For more information about our technology, single-source publishing, translation options, and other topics, please see our frequently asked questions or the full LOOPS features list.
Would you like to discuss your project?
↻ 2025-08-21