I admire and respect Zoho a lot. These guys walk their talk on usability. These guys adopted blogging and wikis with a vengeance and I am sure it is paying off.
So, when the cat called curiosity bit me, I downloaded their PDF manual. And, I am sad when I say this, I screamed in my head ‘you too Zoho!?’ I could see actual content only after 14 pages. That my friend is a sin. And, the bookmarks do not appear on the left-pane. It is bad enough that you offer PDF manuals: you don’t zip them; refuse to tell me the size of the file or how long it’d take to download IN TO MY GODDAMNED BROWSER without my permission! Why can’t people just zip the PDF! PDF is for print. Not for online consumption.
No, don’t say ‘everybody does it!’ That is not the point. When you as a company set out, embraced, and made usability central to your product(s), why the hell would you treat your user manual like you would a homeless bum?
That said, Zoho’s wiki-based documentation seems cool. But PDF… WHY!? gaawd! Why? For a Saas product that too!
Write to me: Sumank[at]gmail[dot]com
Hi Suman,
Thanks for your comments. Your point is well taken. We will fix the pdf issues soon.
About the option to give a downloadable pdf, it was a request from our users.
Arvind
http://zoho.com
arvind, glad you guys are listening. Downloadable PDF is not = PDF that hijacks control and renders itself in my browser. Downloadable PDF = zipped PDF. And telling users what to expect.
Thanks again, Suman 🙂