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Just need a bit of advice here, if we embed Adobe Reader as an activex control, as well as have a fallback PDF viewer (in case the user doesn't have Adobe Reader installed) would it be wiser to put screenshots in the manual using whatever the latest version of Adobe Reader is, or using the fallback reader?

I can see the drawbacks and benefits of both. For one thing, the look and feel of the fallback reader is constant, whereas Adobe Reader changes, so we don't have to redo the manual as often. But we expect that 90% of users will have Adobe Reader, so what they see in the manual won't even be what's in the program if we use the fallback reader for screenshots.

So what's the solution. Adobe, Fallback Reader or Both?

(For the record, the manual is a CHM, not a PDF)

gnat
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Peter Turner
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1 Answers1

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...what they see in the manual won't even be what's in the program if we use the fallback reader for screenshots

To me above reads as screen shots made that way would be useless (or almost useless). This makes a pretty strong case in favor of Adobe option.

Also it makes sense to smoke test how the manual looks in the fallback reader before releasing it. If testing shows that problem with particular screen shot breaks a large portion of manual when viewed that way, you may reconsider a general preference for that screen shot. Images hacked for fallback reader would need to be re-tested with Adobe.

gnat
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