5 ms·

"Betting the company"? Sounds a little dramatic. It's HTML5 not Silverlight. How much risk is there really?

by thiele 16y ago

FlorinAndrei 16y ago
My thoughts exactly. HTML5 is going to be (or is already) everywhere, so where's the big risk?
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Performance maybe - but it's hard to imagine any HTML5 implementation to be slower than Flash is. Also, HTML5 isn't arriving on IE for some time yet, and even then it may take years for the general public to update to something that can render HTML5 properly. I wouldn't use any of the more complex/less-supported features of HTML5 on any live site today, that's for sure.
  - watmough 16y ago
    Really? I always thought that Flash was quite performant compared to browser-based Javascript. Can you point to any benchmarks?
    - MartinCron 16y ago
      Flash performance varies widely. Flash on Mac OSX is generally regarded as terrible, while Flash on Windows isn't as bad.
      - earl 16y ago
        If by generally regarded, you mean literally blows chunks... ffs, VLC is open source and it performs better on my macbook pro. Adobe is too incompetent even to copy freely available code.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        andybak 16y ago
        Adobe can't fix Flash (the plugin) on OSX by copying code from VLC. As far as I understand it, the problem is the rendering pipeline provided by the OS and browser.
        camwest 16y ago
        Clearly video and PDF display are two different animals. Saying that performance blows on video and then using VLC as a comparison for JavaScript vs ActionScript performance is completely besides the point.
        MartinCron 16y ago
        Yeah, sure, "blows chunks" is a perfectly fair assessment. I was just trying to be somewhat diplomatic. I work with a hardcore Mac zealot and it's a running joke in the office that he will complain about Flash performance every single day.
- matthiaskramm 16y ago
  Investment risk. Scribd is a small company, and putting a whole battalion of developers on a PDF to HTML5 conversion for half a year without even knowing whether that'll turn out to be possible (as in, good enough for 10,000,000 documents) is a scary move. That being said, check out our upcoming engineering blog for technical details about how we convert to HTML5 now!
  - axod 16y ago
    "putting a whole battalion of developers on a PDF to HTML5 conversion for half a year without even knowing whether that'll turn out to be possible" The Google pdf viewer seems good enough to me. It'll be interesting to see what you can improve on that.
    - matthiaskramm 16y ago
      stay tuned.
    - bobbyi 16y ago
      Actual pdf readers like Preview seem good enough to me. I don't understand why I would need to take a PDF and view it as HTML. I do see the value for formats like .pptx where I may not have a reader, but PDF is already a "lowest common denominator" like HTML.
      - sesqu 16y ago
        I've occasionally been thankful for Google's PDF conversion. PDF isn't a lowest common denominator - there are computers without that capability (kiosks and terminals, for example). What's more, PDF viewers can be pretty heavy, especially for fancy documents, and their browser integration tends to suck even when it exists. Sure, I like reading my PDFs with evince, but sometimes HTML is just preferrable.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - 16y ago
mikexstudios 16y ago
Internet Explorer...
- jamesjyu 16y ago
  FYI, this will work in IE.
  - zmmmmm 16y ago
    Which versions? If it's IE6 then it can't be terribly HTML5-ish.
    - qhoxie 16y ago
      IE6+. In less-compatible browsers there are workarounds to implement the same features, so the UX is basically the same.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
axod 16y ago
"Betting the company" was clearly designed to get upvotes and media interest.
teej 16y ago
There's always risk in changing the technology platform of your core product. Things to consider: - What development tools will devs use? - How long will it take devs to get up to speed on them? - How does debugging work? - How do you handle losing breakpoints? - What does the new build process look like? - How are you going to handle graceful degradation? - How does font-end error reporting work? - How long will it take to make the migration? - What business metrics are you tracking to acknowledge you made the right user choice? The right technology choice? - How soon will we see the needle move on those business metrics? - How will this affect growth in the short term? - Do your hardcore Flash employees want to be working in HTML5? What will you do if they don't? Major technology shifts are a lot more complicated than just "code it and see what happens" when you have an established product and team.
- apphacker 16y ago
  Losing breakpoints? Why would they lose breakpoints? Maybe I misunderstand but you can debug JavaScript with breakpoints.
yumraj 16y ago
Exactly. This seems like a nice little PR move to have everyone talking about Scribd while this Flash-HTML5/Adobe-Apple thing is red hot. Now, people who had never heard of this company are aware of them and am 100% sure their hit rate when way up high today.
- purp 16y ago
  Yep. It was clever of us to invest months of engineering time on this while also arranging for the Apple/Adobe schism to continue to worsen, and talk Steve Jobs into posting his thoughts at just the right time to frame our launch. We're just that amazing. ;]
  - ggrot 16y ago
    What you did was a more than a PR stunt. The "betting the company" line is just dramatic hyperbole. I consider "betting the company" to be saying - OK, if X happens I'll shut down the company, if !X happens you'll buy my company for 100M dollars. In reality what you are saying is that if X happens, you waste alot of time, if !X happens then there is still no guaranteed outcome.
    - purp 16y ago
      I believe I understand your perspective. I think you're saying that "Betting The Company" == "Taking Mortal Risk", and I agree with that definition. I don't agree that the odds are fixed, nor that it's all-or-nothing-to-the-end. For any startup, you take mortal risk as infrequently as you can; you hedge those bets as much as you can; and, since you can invest effort to change the game in reaction to the market, you work to improve your odds over time. So in the end, I believe you present a false dichotomy. It's rarely $100MM or death, and there's never a guaranteed outcome.
    - earl 16y ago
      Seriously? You're whining about the CTO calling investing 6 months of three quarters of their dev team into a risky project betting the company? While it isn't literally a 100 percent make-or-break project, Scribd does have competitors who haven't been kind enough to sit on ass for 6 months. They need to have something with some business benefit to show for that 6 months or it's going to be extraordinarily painful.

"Betting the company"? Sounds a little dramatic. It's HTML5 not Silverlight. How much risk is there really?

by thiele 16y ago

"Betting the company"? Sounds a little dramatic. It's HTML5 not Silverlight. How much risk is there really?

FlorinAndrei 16y ago

My thoughts exactly. HTML5 is going to be (or is already) everywhere, so where's the big risk?

potatolicious 16y ago
Performance maybe - but it's hard to imagine any HTML5 implementation to be slower than Flash is. Also, HTML5 isn't arriving on IE for some time yet, and even then it may take years for the general public to update to something that can render HTML5 properly. I wouldn't use any of the more complex/less-supported features of HTML5 on any live site today, that's for sure.
- watmough 16y ago
  Really? I always thought that Flash was quite performant compared to browser-based Javascript. Can you point to any benchmarks?
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    Flash performance varies widely. Flash on Mac OSX is generally regarded as terrible, while Flash on Windows isn't as bad.
    - earl 16y ago
      If by generally regarded, you mean literally blows chunks... ffs, VLC is open source and it performs better on my macbook pro. Adobe is too incompetent even to copy freely available code.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - andybak 16y ago
        Adobe can't fix Flash (the plugin) on OSX by copying code from VLC. As far as I understand it, the problem is the rendering pipeline provided by the OS and browser.
      - camwest 16y ago
        Clearly video and PDF display are two different animals. Saying that performance blows on video and then using VLC as a comparison for JavaScript vs ActionScript performance is completely besides the point.
      - MartinCron 16y ago
        Yeah, sure, "blows chunks" is a perfectly fair assessment. I was just trying to be somewhat diplomatic. I work with a hardcore Mac zealot and it's a running joke in the office that he will complain about Flash performance every single day.
matthiaskramm 16y ago
Investment risk. Scribd is a small company, and putting a whole battalion of developers on a PDF to HTML5 conversion for half a year without even knowing whether that'll turn out to be possible (as in, good enough for 10,000,000 documents) is a scary move. That being said, check out our upcoming engineering blog for technical details about how we convert to HTML5 now!
- axod 16y ago
  "putting a whole battalion of developers on a PDF to HTML5 conversion for half a year without even knowing whether that'll turn out to be possible" The Google pdf viewer seems good enough to me. It'll be interesting to see what you can improve on that.
  - matthiaskramm 16y ago
    stay tuned.
  - bobbyi 16y ago
    Actual pdf readers like Preview seem good enough to me. I don't understand why I would need to take a PDF and view it as HTML. I do see the value for formats like .pptx where I may not have a reader, but PDF is already a "lowest common denominator" like HTML.
    - sesqu 16y ago
      I've occasionally been thankful for Google's PDF conversion. PDF isn't a lowest common denominator - there are computers without that capability (kiosks and terminals, for example). What's more, PDF viewers can be pretty heavy, especially for fancy documents, and their browser integration tends to suck even when it exists. Sure, I like reading my PDFs with evince, but sometimes HTML is just preferrable.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - 16y ago

mikexstudios 16y ago

Internet Explorer...

jamesjyu 16y ago
FYI, this will work in IE.
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  Which versions? If it's IE6 then it can't be terribly HTML5-ish.
  - qhoxie 16y ago
    IE6+. In less-compatible browsers there are workarounds to implement the same features, so the UX is basically the same.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

axod 16y ago

"Betting the company" was clearly designed to get upvotes and media interest.

teej 16y ago

There's always risk in changing the technology platform of your core product. Things to consider: - What development tools will devs use? - How long will it take devs to get up to speed on them? - How does debugging work? - How do you handle losing breakpoints? - What does the new build process look like? - How are you going to handle graceful degradation? - How does font-end error reporting work? - How long will it take to make the migration? - What business metrics are you tracking to acknowledge you made the right user choice? The right technology choice? - How soon will we see the needle move on those business metrics? - How will this affect growth in the short term? - Do your hardcore Flash employees want to be working in HTML5? What will you do if they don't? Major technology shifts are a lot more complicated than just "code it and see what happens" when you have an established product and team.

apphacker 16y ago
Losing breakpoints? Why would they lose breakpoints? Maybe I misunderstand but you can debug JavaScript with breakpoints.

yumraj 16y ago

Exactly. This seems like a nice little PR move to have everyone talking about Scribd while this Flash-HTML5/Adobe-Apple thing is red hot. Now, people who had never heard of this company are aware of them and am 100% sure their hit rate when way up high today.

purp 16y ago
Yep. It was clever of us to invest months of engineering time on this while also arranging for the Apple/Adobe schism to continue to worsen, and talk Steve Jobs into posting his thoughts at just the right time to frame our launch. We're just that amazing. ;]
- ggrot 16y ago
  What you did was a more than a PR stunt. The "betting the company" line is just dramatic hyperbole. I consider "betting the company" to be saying - OK, if X happens I'll shut down the company, if !X happens you'll buy my company for 100M dollars. In reality what you are saying is that if X happens, you waste alot of time, if !X happens then there is still no guaranteed outcome.
  - purp 16y ago
    I believe I understand your perspective. I think you're saying that "Betting The Company" == "Taking Mortal Risk", and I agree with that definition. I don't agree that the odds are fixed, nor that it's all-or-nothing-to-the-end. For any startup, you take mortal risk as infrequently as you can; you hedge those bets as much as you can; and, since you can invest effort to change the game in reaction to the market, you work to improve your odds over time. So in the end, I believe you present a false dichotomy. It's rarely $100MM or death, and there's never a guaranteed outcome.
  - earl 16y ago
    Seriously? You're whining about the CTO calling investing 6 months of three quarters of their dev team into a risky project betting the company? While it isn't literally a 100 percent make-or-break project, Scribd does have competitors who haven't been kind enough to sit on ass for 6 months. They need to have something with some business benefit to show for that 6 months or it's going to be extraordinarily painful.