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Hmmm, let me get this straight. The author wants a service that allows developers to quickly and programatically convert proprietary format documents (MS Office

Hmmm, let me get this straight. The author wants a service that allows developers to quickly and programatically convert proprietary format documents (MS Office, etc) to standard easily viewable formats (pdf, flash) for FREE to 'die' because he has somehow missed the obvious text-selection tool in iPaper (even same icon as Adobe uses), the obvious ways to download the document as pdf, and somehow has mysterious double-scrollbars that no one else seems able to duplicate. Better vote this post up! I'll try to counter the rant with one of my top reasons Scribd should not die: Have you ever been to a corporate site that has loads of links to Microsoft Office documents? (Ex: http://www.humanrights.coe.int/equality/Eng/WordDocs/Document%20list.htm http://www.humanrights.coe.int/equality/Eng/WordDocs/Documen... ) I have, and it's such a pain to have to download and open the documents manually. Then I also have the documents that I downloaded cluttering up my hard drive - when all I wanted to do was take a quick look at it. So I find myself not even bothering with the Office documents - which I'm sure is not what the company trying to promote themselves wants. If you look at http://www.scribd.com/platform/documentation http://www.scribd.com/platform/documentation - you'll see Scribd has provided a solution to this problem with their QuickSwitch service. Once this is used, all of those proprietary format documents on the site are 'magically' converted into standard formats you can view easily: pdf and flash. Nice.

tx 18y ago
Hmmm, let me get this straight. The author wants a service that allows developers to quickly and programatically convert proprietary format documents (MS Office, etc) to standard easily viewable formats (pdf, flash) for FREE to 'die' because he has somehow missed the obvious text-selection tool in iPaper (even same icon as Adobe uses) No, the author wants a service that converts from open and easily readable formats like HTML, Office and PDF into hard-to-use junk format of Flash, partly because it doesn't do select/copy/paste via browser and re-implements the wheel in process and he wants it to die because it's a fucking pain whenever someone sends you a link to THAT as opposed to a normal HTML page or a more consumable PDF/doc/etc. They should have written a high-quality converter of "everything-to-HTML". I haven't seen a single Scribd "document" that couldn't benefit from being a normal HTML. I don't touch Scribd links. Reading text in Flash it's not convenient, it's slow and plain moronic: it's like filming a video of a page and uploading it to youtube (analogy not mine). Yes, I want them to die too, because I see Flash as a proprietary and badly implemented anchor that's pulling us back, into "platform" days, when instead of developing software for people you had to "target a platform". I want no freaking "platforms" from nobody. I am happy Apple doesn't put this plague on their phone. There are startups that change the world, make it better. Then there are those that simply make money without doing anything impressive, just helping people out here and there. But then there are companies that try to profit at someone else's expense, and Scribd is one of them - Scribd is clearly in Adobe's army of flash developers, and they're looking to ruin the web for all of us, because they're imposing "Adobe tax" on everything web-connected: crawlers need to understand that junk, new hardware needs to have a "player" for it, new browsers, new OS'es, etc. Fuck Scribd.

tx 18y ago

Hmmm, let me get this straight. The author wants a service that allows developers to quickly and programatically convert proprietary format documents (MS Office, etc) to standard easily viewable formats (pdf, flash) for FREE to 'die' because he has somehow missed the obvious text-selection tool in iPaper (even same icon as Adobe uses) No, the author wants a service that converts from open and easily readable formats like HTML, Office and PDF into hard-to-use junk format of Flash, partly because it doesn't do select/copy/paste via browser and re-implements the wheel in process and he wants it to die because it's a fucking pain whenever someone sends you a link to THAT as opposed to a normal HTML page or a more consumable PDF/doc/etc. They should have written a high-quality converter of "everything-to-HTML". I haven't seen a single Scribd "document" that couldn't benefit from being a normal HTML. I don't touch Scribd links. Reading text in Flash it's not convenient, it's slow and plain moronic: it's like filming a video of a page and uploading it to youtube (analogy not mine). Yes, I want them to die too, because I see Flash as a proprietary and badly implemented anchor that's pulling us back, into "platform" days, when instead of developing software for people you had to "target a platform". I want no freaking "platforms" from nobody. I am happy Apple doesn't put this plague on their phone. There are startups that change the world, make it better. Then there are those that simply make money without doing anything impressive, just helping people out here and there. But then there are companies that try to profit at someone else's expense, and Scribd is one of them - Scribd is clearly in Adobe's army of flash developers, and they're looking to ruin the web for all of us, because they're imposing "Adobe tax" on everything web-connected: crawlers need to understand that junk, new hardware needs to have a "player" for it, new browsers, new OS'es, etc. Fuck Scribd.