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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 whethe

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]
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    In ChromeOS you'll need some kind of pdf viewer that runs in the browser. And not needing a native app is pretty nice in general in terms of bookmarking possibilities.
    - mbreese 16y ago
      Doesn't ChromeOS load PDFs into the Google PDF viewer?
  - earl 16y ago
    Well, two of many reasons are adobe is run by morons incapable of making a secure or performant product. Unless you missed the wave of acrobat exploits? 'Cause my gf's laptop sure didn't :( Removing yet another plugin from your browser shrinks the attack surface, and as a side benefit, reduces use of one of the worst IMO bits of web tech.
  - Kadin 16y ago
    Downloading a separate file and then launching an external application is obnoxious, particularly when it creates a new window. I know a lot of people who actively avoid and refuse to click on PDF links for that reason. I've always thought that the best solution would be for browsers to just include PDF rendering support alongside HTML. PDF is a popular enough format on the web that it should really be handled by the browser as a core feature, not by some add-on or external application. I really liked Apple's Safari for this reason (although I dumped it for Firefox because of AdBlockPlus). Done right it would seem like perhaps some of the higher-level rendering layers of the browser could be reused, regardless of whether the underlying content was PDF or HTML. (In fact isn't this how Safari works, with Quartz?) No offense to Scribd, but I'd like to see the need for their service go away by in-browser support for progressively-downloaded PDFs.
- earl 16y ago
  html >> images
benatkin 16y ago
I'll believe it when I see it. To me, this feels like desperation. It seems a little late to stop depending solely on Flash. Also, why not say that you're moving after you partially move? The companies I admire the most brag about distant features the least.
- tyler 16y ago
  "Distant features"? It's launching tomorrow.
  - patrickgzill 16y ago
    Yes, but that is 86400 seconds from now ..
Anon84 16y ago
The change isn't as great as it seems (at least at first). Right now their setup probably looks something like this: PDF -> Internal Representation -> Flash viewer In principle they should only need to change to PDF -> Internal Representation -> HTML5 viewer That alone should make a huge different in terms of time needed.
- tyler 16y ago
  Most things certainly are simple in principle.
  - Anon84 16y ago
    I'm not saying it's trivial... just that they are not exactly restarting from scratch. Never having done something similar myself, I would expect the hardest part to be correctly parsing the original PDFs and dealing with the varyiaty of PDF generators out there.
krishna2 16y ago
Small in size but still one of the top200 (150?) web sites.
- earl 16y ago
  156 http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com

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]
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  In ChromeOS you'll need some kind of pdf viewer that runs in the browser. And not needing a native app is pretty nice in general in terms of bookmarking possibilities.
  - mbreese 16y ago
    Doesn't ChromeOS load PDFs into the Google PDF viewer?
- earl 16y ago
  Well, two of many reasons are adobe is run by morons incapable of making a secure or performant product. Unless you missed the wave of acrobat exploits? 'Cause my gf's laptop sure didn't :( Removing yet another plugin from your browser shrinks the attack surface, and as a side benefit, reduces use of one of the worst IMO bits of web tech.
- Kadin 16y ago
  Downloading a separate file and then launching an external application is obnoxious, particularly when it creates a new window. I know a lot of people who actively avoid and refuse to click on PDF links for that reason. I've always thought that the best solution would be for browsers to just include PDF rendering support alongside HTML. PDF is a popular enough format on the web that it should really be handled by the browser as a core feature, not by some add-on or external application. I really liked Apple's Safari for this reason (although I dumped it for Firefox because of AdBlockPlus). Done right it would seem like perhaps some of the higher-level rendering layers of the browser could be reused, regardless of whether the underlying content was PDF or HTML. (In fact isn't this how Safari works, with Quartz?) No offense to Scribd, but I'd like to see the need for their service go away by in-browser support for progressively-downloaded PDFs.
earl 16y ago
html >> images

benatkin 16y ago

I'll believe it when I see it. To me, this feels like desperation. It seems a little late to stop depending solely on Flash. Also, why not say that you're moving after you partially move? The companies I admire the most brag about distant features the least.

tyler 16y ago
"Distant features"? It's launching tomorrow.
- patrickgzill 16y ago
  Yes, but that is 86400 seconds from now ..

Anon84 16y ago

The change isn't as great as it seems (at least at first). Right now their setup probably looks something like this: PDF -> Internal Representation -> Flash viewer In principle they should only need to change to PDF -> Internal Representation -> HTML5 viewer That alone should make a huge different in terms of time needed.

tyler 16y ago
Most things certainly are simple in principle.
- Anon84 16y ago
  I'm not saying it's trivial... just that they are not exactly restarting from scratch. Never having done something similar myself, I would expect the hardest part to be correctly parsing the original PDFs and dealing with the varyiaty of PDF generators out there.

krishna2 16y ago

Small in size but still one of the top200 (150?) web sites.

earl 16y ago
156 http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com