Route map
I put a route map and cue sheet on the routes page. I haven’t yet found a pleasing layout format, but I am wondering about the profile and cue sheet formats. Right now, the profile is a Flashpaper SWF, and the cue sheet is a PDF. I can’t decide which is better.
Both formats can be downloaded for printing or viewed on the web. Both have free viewers. The Flash player is much smaller and quicker to load than the Acrobat Reader. Rendering quality is about the same. From the creator’s point of view (that would be me), PDF files are easier to manipulate after they’ve been created. Once the SWF is created, there’s nothing you can do with it except display. (That is, you can’t combine or remove pages, you can’t annotate, and you can’t create bookmarks or thumbnails.)
The only real benefit I can see to Flashpaper is you can embed it directly in the page for display which is something that’s possible but cumbersome (for the viewer) with Acrobat. For an embeded PDF, you still have to load the piggy reader. For an embeded SWF, the flash player is so small the load time for the player (as opposed to the file download) is barely noticeable.
What’s easier for people to use?
