[Goladus]

> My question on this issue is: Is a PDF download really so bad?

It's getting better, but it's still a hassle to download and open a pdf. Well-designed html is much preferred for me. That said, a well-designed PDF that downloads quickly is better than a poorly-designed menu section that loads slowly or worse, is inaccurate.

[tomkarlo]

Yes, it's really bad, because it's generally totally unnecessary. Menus are generally almost entirely text (unless you're at McDonald's or the Chinese take-out), so there's essentially zero gain from making them a PDF. Meanwhile, they're slower to load and if you're on a device that doesn't support PDF, you're just SOL.

[simonw]

Menus are way more than just text - the layout, relative sizing etc are often very carefully designed to Make More Money.

Salon had an article about this last year: http://www.salon.com/food/francis_lam/2010/02/22/how_menus_m...

[mgkimsal]

It's foolish to think that a PDF representation on a 3" screen (or a portrait screen which almost all screen are) has the same effect. The context is different - in a restaurant, I've made a decision to be there, and I'm sitting down physically holding the menu in my hand, often with music in the background, the smell of the food in the place, sitting with friends/family, etc.

In a restaurant, we're in "impulse buy mode", and menus may be oriented around maximizing our impulse buys. Almost without exception, people looking at a website are in research/decision mode, and the same presentation in both makes for a crappy experience.

Rather than using the same stupid layout/pricing tricks in a crappy PDF on a website, they should be using 'tricks' like showing us the hours of the restaurant so we know if we drive 20 minutes there they'll be open, or the 'trick' of answering your emails as quickly as you answer your phone (indeed, another trick might be answering your phone pleasantly with clear, paced speech that most people can understand).

[tomkarlo]

Taking something designed to work in print and attempting to blindly replicate it (without interpretation) in a totally different medium is a way to Make Less Money.