Adding a PDF, Powerpoint or MSWord Document

Sometimes I am asked how to add a file to a page - PDFs, Powerpoint and MSWord documents are the most popular. It's quite easy to do, but is it advisable? In this article I'll explain why it is often considered a bad idea, and ways to get around the pitfalls.

I despise some PDFs with a passion, and for lots of reasons. I'll admit there are some rare situations when we need to use them:

1. To supply printable documents.
2. Because your boss / client has asked for it.

I'm not alone. It has made it into Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design, and in general web users hate having to open a PDF. Here's why some people get emotional about pdfs:

• They clicked on a link & didn't realise it was a PDF
• It crashes their machine, or slows it down dramatically.
• They can't get back to the site they were on
• The text in the PDF is too small, and they can't easily find the information that they were looking for.
• ... lots more, but this article describes it better - PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

PDFs (& the like) are more convenient for the author than for the user. The best medium to deliver text-based content over the internet is usually nice, fast, clean, universal, free html.

<irellevent rant> Furthermore - and it gets personal - Adobe is an arrogant monopoly with outrageously overpriced products that are slow and buggy. Don't take my word for it, read some other comments: http://stevesrantsnraves.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-i-hate-adobe.html 

There once existed a most glorius company called Macromedia... etc </irellevent rant>

Anyway, in real life we often have to do things that we dont want to do, thats the nature of samsara, so here's how we can insert PDFs and other files into our joomla articles ...