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> that's why you get restaurants whose menu is only available as a PDF, a deeply mobile-hostile format, when just putting it on the front page would actually be
by wlesieutre 7y ago
> that's why you get restaurants whose menu is only available as a PDF, a deeply mobile-hostile format, when just putting it on the front page would actually be easier and work better for the user.
That might be the case if the website were the only place where the menu goes, but they need a paper menu for in the restaurant and just putting a PDF of that is easier than also maintaining a second copy in a web-friendly format.
- Finnucane 7y agoThat's not really a good excuse, since the PDF is made from a source document that could be repurposed to be more web-friendly if they were willing to make a small amount of extra effort.
- wlesieutre 7y agoSmall for you, a person who hangs out on HN. Even with a service like Squarespace, asking a restaurant owner to create a well-formatted digital version of the menu and keep it up to date with any revisions is a big enough ask that they can't be assed. Having visually impaired friends who aren't well served by a PDF that doesn't respect their text size preferences and requires zooming way in and scrolling side to side to read each line, I wish that weren't the case. But that's where we're at.
- Finnucane 7y agoThen it sounds like there's a missed opportunity for some clever person to develop a better system for these customers to use.
- paulryanrogers 7y agoMy guess is the problem is more that there are too many such systems in use. So unifying the process to make a paper and web change requires updating a thousand different solutions.