more on PDF
HTML vs PDF is a difficult juggling act... while on-line I'm perfectly happy with well executed HTML/CSS, and actually, I prefer it over any other format. BUT, if the page is a technical article that I am going to want to revisit more than once I want a downloadable version, and yes, I want it in PDF format. PDF is proprietary, but it is also portable, and there are enough readers out there to please (almost) everyone.
If the site provides a well thought out print style sheet then I can live with printing to PDF, but it is not the best solution.
Word processing file formats are the worst. I suppose there is probably a way to integrate either Open Office or MS Office documents into a web site elegantly, but I'm not the only one who has not found "the way"... admittedly I never tried.
My favorite sites offer three ways to view information:
1) on screen via a well done style sheet and HTML
2) print out via a separate style sheet (sometimes multiple style sheets, color vs mono, with and without graphics, etc)
3) off-line via PDF.
