Creating a link to a particular page of a pdf

[jscheuer1]

Hmm, I thought you had already mentioned that you had documents that spanned more than one PDF file. I guess I misunderstood.

Now I would like to expand upon the other thing:

If it works in most cases with the obvious fall back/failure being that the file opens to its first or some other unexpected page leaving the user to search the PDF for the desired content, why test in so many browsers?

[james438]

Just the major browsers, maybe 4 - 6 altogether. Sometimes I had error messages saying that the parameter I used was not recognized even though it was only one or two browsers that couldn't figure out what I was doing and it scrolled to some odd location in the pdf that had nothing to do with the parameter I set. djr33 recommends it and why not

Either way this is just for a matter of convenience for the user. If I consistently have no problems with my first few citations after testing it in multiple browsers then I will use the parameter and not worry about it. I will continue to list the page number next to the pdf documents that I cite.

[djr33]

The real issue here will be plugins, not browsers. I imagine that IE/FF/Opera on Windows will behave very similarly (if not identically) if they're all using the Adobe Acrobat plugin. And possibly also on a Mac (and Linux?) if users do use such a plugin. But for users who have a different plugin or no plugin at all, it will likely behave very differently. And remember some devices (like iPhones) use native PDF readers that may have unique functionality.

So in short, testing this by installing multiple browsers on your machine won't work well. If it works in one browser, it'll probably work in the others. You'd actually need to test this with multiple machines (or at least different plugin combinations).

However, if you get it to work with the Adobe Acrobat plugin, then it might work with all of the other ones that would work at all-- they might copy the same functionality. I doubt the other plugins offer any specialized page-linking options (though I have no idea). So really you'll just end up with those that work because they're like Acrobat and those that don't. Fairly simple.

[jscheuer1]

Chrome has a native reader and it works with that. I think most third party readers will try to emulate such a simple convention as page numbers.

[djr33]

I think most third party readers will try to emulate such a simple convention as page numbers.

That's assuming they're intended to be roughly equivalent. I don't know if that's a reliable assumption. The most basic behavior (such as whether a PDF downloads, opens in a new window, or opens in the same window) can vary, so I don't think page numbers would be reliable, no. If they do offer that option, then they probably do use the same format, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they don't.

[jscheuer1]

I think most will. The decision to view in the browser, the reader, or to download is made by how the browser and OS are configured and is a separate issue.