Every once in a while, I come across a business requirement asking me to force a PDF document to be downloaded from a website instead of opened in the user's browser. While I question this every time since it is forcing the user to do more work to read the content, it's a small tweak to the site to implement and thus usually does get implemented.
Looking around online, I cannot find anyone who has done any studies (quantitative or qualitative) with regards to if this practice should be done. Almost all content I found online focuses on the "same tab/different tab" debate.
While I know exceptions always exist, does anyone have any insight for if it's a good practice to force a user to download a PDF file instead of letting it open in their browser (or whatever default the user has)?
Answer
Taken from the NielsonNorman website:
It seems that if you have a PDF you want the user to see, make it downloadable - Don't make them view it in the brower, especially if it's a large size.
Forcing users to browse PDF files makes usability approximately 300% worse compared to HTML pages. Only use PDF for documents that users are likely to print.
This is my rough estimate, based on watching users perform similar tasks on a variety of sites that used either PDF or regular Web pages. Because I have not performed a detailed measurement study of PDF on its own, I can't calculate the precise usability degradation. However, whether the true number is 280% or 320%, one thing is certain: the number is big and reflects significant user suffering in terms of increased task time and more frequent failures.
The issue of users scanning the screen instead of reading all of it's contents is also a factor when deciding to display PDF's.
Nielson also tells how PDF's have also been known to crash user's computers.
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