If a company delivers a lengthy article on-line, why don’t they anticipate that it is going to be read, at least initially, on a computer screen? I have just endured the frustration of trying to read another document formatted in a magazine layout and delivered as an Acrobat document. It is formatted in two columns on a page that when printed out would be on a an 8.5×11 page.

This means that you have to move down the page continuously until you reach the bottom of the column and then scroll back up to the top to the second column before continuing to the next page. There’s no way that you are going to speed read your way through this article. All because you MIGHT print this out. What a waste of time!

The page size should be half size so that you can view its entirety in one screen and you can go page by page with the page down key.

The distributor of the document (in this case ZDNet) could provide value to their customers by surveying the readers as to whether they plan to print the document out or read it on line.