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Crocodoc (YC W10) Sets Its Sights On Adobe Acrobat With New Update

65 points by rdamico 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
bretthoerner 17y ago
Hm, a bit slow on my top of line MacBook Pro, Chrome, latest Flash... just trying to draw on a small PDF...
- mattlong 17y ago
  crocodoc developer here. This generally depends on the complexity and number of pages in the PDF. If your PDF has a lot of images, graphics, etc or has a lot of pages (more than 60-80) or some combination thereof, Flash becomes...shall we say, unhappy. Feel free to contact myself or crocodoc support about the issue and we'll take a look at it.
  - dzlobin 17y ago
    I always appreciate active customer support/outreach like this. Keep up the awesome work
cominatchu 17y ago
This kind of evolution to the cloud is inevitable, I'm glad to see a team making it happen for a piece of software that is so essential to business.
lloydarmbrust 17y ago
Finally! Now ... umm ... certain people I know won't have to pirate stupid Acrobat. I hate that program. The funny thing is that Adobe could probably make the same thing in about three weeks, but they won't because they hate change.
- paraschopra 17y ago
  Foxit is a great desktop replacement for Adobe Acrobat. I love their products..
- weaksauce 17y ago
  Skim on the mac side is excellent, open source, and free.
lallysingh 17y ago
Hmm, they're taking a bit of a risk with being flash-based for pdf-export. Hitting your platform vendor for one of their (presumably) cash cows is asking for a response.
- jackowayed 17y ago
  It's not like Adobe has some kill switch for Flash apps or can deny them new versions of Flash or anything. If they were putting something that competed with Apple/AT&T in the App Store, that would be one thing because Apple could find (or invent) some TOS violation and then flip a switch and delete it from all the iPhones everywhere. But Adobe can't do much to kill a Flash app they don't like. I guess they could add some "if domain = crocodoc.com {crash()}" type line to a Flash update, but it would be hard to do in a way where they wouldn't get caught, and that would be a horrible anti-trust case for them. Besides, for a very long time, Crocodoc won't be taking appreciable market share. Plus I don't see Crocodoc as much of an Acrobat competitor. Acrobat is for creating and editing PDFs; Crocodoc is for marking them up with edits. I doubt very many people that actually need Acrobat could get away with just using Crocodoc.
mediaman 17y ago
This is exactly what I've been looking for -- I've been trying to find a way to collaboratively edit a draft PDF of a newsletter, without dumping a lot of money on Acrobat.
TrevorBurnham 17y ago
Looks good! Are notes added on the site compatible with Acrobat Reader, though?
- mattlong 17y ago
  I'm a developer with crocodoc. Yes, all annotations you make in crocodoc will show up in Acrobat Reader, Foxit, etc. More detail: Sticky Notes and highlight comments are saved as native PDF comments. All other annotation types (highlights, strikeouts, and drawings) are drawn in to the PDF file.
jamesbritt 17y ago
Very encouraging. I tried to "print to PDF" a sample doc I had been plying with, but it just reported some unnamed error. Assuming that sort of stuff gets fixed and polished up, this site solves a few real problems for me.

65 points by rdamico 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

bretthoerner 17y ago

Hm, a bit slow on my top of line MacBook Pro, Chrome, latest Flash... just trying to draw on a small PDF...

mattlong 17y ago
crocodoc developer here. This generally depends on the complexity and number of pages in the PDF. If your PDF has a lot of images, graphics, etc or has a lot of pages (more than 60-80) or some combination thereof, Flash becomes...shall we say, unhappy. Feel free to contact myself or crocodoc support about the issue and we'll take a look at it.
- dzlobin 17y ago
  I always appreciate active customer support/outreach like this. Keep up the awesome work

cominatchu 17y ago

This kind of evolution to the cloud is inevitable, I'm glad to see a team making it happen for a piece of software that is so essential to business.

lloydarmbrust 17y ago

Finally! Now ... umm ... certain people I know won't have to pirate stupid Acrobat. I hate that program. The funny thing is that Adobe could probably make the same thing in about three weeks, but they won't because they hate change.

paraschopra 17y ago
Foxit is a great desktop replacement for Adobe Acrobat. I love their products..
weaksauce 17y ago
Skim on the mac side is excellent, open source, and free.

lallysingh 17y ago

Hmm, they're taking a bit of a risk with being flash-based for pdf-export. Hitting your platform vendor for one of their (presumably) cash cows is asking for a response.

jackowayed 17y ago
It's not like Adobe has some kill switch for Flash apps or can deny them new versions of Flash or anything. If they were putting something that competed with Apple/AT&T in the App Store, that would be one thing because Apple could find (or invent) some TOS violation and then flip a switch and delete it from all the iPhones everywhere. But Adobe can't do much to kill a Flash app they don't like. I guess they could add some "if domain = crocodoc.com {crash()}" type line to a Flash update, but it would be hard to do in a way where they wouldn't get caught, and that would be a horrible anti-trust case for them. Besides, for a very long time, Crocodoc won't be taking appreciable market share. Plus I don't see Crocodoc as much of an Acrobat competitor. Acrobat is for creating and editing PDFs; Crocodoc is for marking them up with edits. I doubt very many people that actually need Acrobat could get away with just using Crocodoc.

mediaman 17y ago

This is exactly what I've been looking for -- I've been trying to find a way to collaboratively edit a draft PDF of a newsletter, without dumping a lot of money on Acrobat.

TrevorBurnham 17y ago

Looks good! Are notes added on the site compatible with Acrobat Reader, though?

mattlong 17y ago
I'm a developer with crocodoc. Yes, all annotations you make in crocodoc will show up in Acrobat Reader, Foxit, etc. More detail: Sticky Notes and highlight comments are saved as native PDF comments. All other annotation types (highlights, strikeouts, and drawings) are drawn in to the PDF file.

jamesbritt 17y ago

Very encouraging. I tried to "print to PDF" a sample doc I had been plying with, but it just reported some unnamed error. Assuming that sort of stuff gets fixed and polished up, this site solves a few real problems for me.