Great article - so much depth and accuracy to this! I see a lot of discussion about the semantics of pdfs but I think those are missing the overarching theme here.
Feels like this is more about the fact that websites have become increasingly dynamic, unstable, unreliable, inconsistent, etc. - pdfs offer something like a book, static, stable, reliable and consistent.
Think about a book you can turn to a specific page no matter how many times you look at it and the print is the same, the information is the same, you can do the same action over and over again and get the same expected result.
Now imagine opening a book and you could have sworn that the chapter you wanted to reference was 11 but now it's 16 and the images are different, the examples are different, in fact the quote that you wanted to use for reference no longer exists in the book.
There's an insanity to this experience but it's exactly what the web is like - a book that is constantly changing, upended changed - even disappearing entirely. I could have sworn I had bought that book on discrete mathematics - how could it be gone? oh that's right the server managing site is powered off - book no longer even exists.
you are correct that you CAN - but who does. That's no longer considered best practice. The arugment these days is that it's a lot easier to manage css if it's in a separate file, same with js, etc. So none of the serious web developers actually do anything inline anymore. The time it would take to convert a "best practice" website with separate files for html, css, js, etc. is just not worth it. The point he's making is still valid - why not have the option for something static.
Feels like this is more about the fact that websites have become increasingly dynamic, unstable, unreliable, inconsistent, etc. - pdfs offer something like a book, static, stable, reliable and consistent.
Think about a book you can turn to a specific page no matter how many times you look at it and the print is the same, the information is the same, you can do the same action over and over again and get the same expected result.
Now imagine opening a book and you could have sworn that the chapter you wanted to reference was 11 but now it's 16 and the images are different, the examples are different, in fact the quote that you wanted to use for reference no longer exists in the book.
There's an insanity to this experience but it's exactly what the web is like - a book that is constantly changing, upended changed - even disappearing entirely. I could have sworn I had bought that book on discrete mathematics - how could it be gone? oh that's right the server managing site is powered off - book no longer even exists.