Here’s my answer. The POINT is that my customer has brochures in MANY foreign languages. They are a non-profit organization. In order to save on printing, and to make these more accessible for people in foreign countries who have to use an internet cafe, PDF seems the best solution. If these documents were on the website in the 20 or so translated languages, it would be a mess!

On almost all of our customers sites I make sure to not only post their menus in HTML but also I include a down-loadable PDF. We’ve found through time that giving their customers a PDF despite HTML inclusion gives them an opportunity to review the menu if the site happens to be down or it’s not cached for one reason or another. Furthermore we’ve received feedback from people stating that having a menu on hand ( double-click from the desktop ) influenced their decision picking one restaurant over another. As simple as it is to pull up the webpage and check the menu, some people appreciate and even more convenient method.

I don’t really understand why anybody would use a PDF for anything else. You often see websites with a link to download their PDF brochure for instance – what’s the point in this? Surely that content should already be on your website in a more accessible and findable form presented in a manner more appropriate for the medium at hand.

Pete