best way to display pdf's

[pkcidstudio]

hey all, i have a legal site here that needs to have a lot of pdfs available and some of the pdf's call on other ones. for usability and cleanness, what would you all recommend is the strongest way to display many pdfs for a website. any thoughts are good thoughts. i think i know what i am going to do but wanted other opinions.

[djr33]

that's like saying "what's the best way to display exes?"

they aren't embeddable... you can't include them, display them, or do anything else with them, except have them for download.

Some browsers can have plugins that (really annoy me) will display the pdf like it's a webpage within that window, but not within a webpage.

Use a different format, or settle with just having them for download.

[Twey]

Remember that PDFs are meant for printing -- not reading online. If you just want a convenient format for displaying documents online, stick with HTML.

[djr33]

Or convert to JPG/GIF/PNG. Those are three, and only, formats you can display in a web page.

(Though there are other formats you can embed using plugins, like .mov/.avi movies, and flash files, etc., but not PDF.)

As Twey says, though, html is for the web. It's the best way. Only use images if your PDFs need to be of that exact formatting or are graphics intense.