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Scribd for me is quite the opposite experience. I hate having my desktop littered with the pointless pdf's I've had to download to view. Instead, Scribd let's m
by mattjaynes 18y ago
Scribd for me is quite the opposite experience. I hate having my desktop littered with the pointless pdf's I've had to download to view. Instead, Scribd let's me take a quick look and then forget about it. If I actually want to download it, I have that option.
Also, I think a lot of folks forget that pdf is just one of the documents they convert. Many of their documents were originally Microsoft Office documents that they've converted to pdf and flash. Again - I'd much rather be able to take a peek at a MS Word doc than have to download it and open it with Microsoft Office on my mac.
For me Scribd makes browsing the web much more seamless. I don't get interrupted by having to download files and open them in another app, then close them, delete the file if I don't want it, then get back to browsing.
Given their user count and traffic, I'm guessing there are many others that feel the same way, but aren't as vocal about their experience because it's so seamless. It's a bit surprising to me to see such vitriol towards an app that provides free hosting to millions of documents converted from all different proprietary formats so they can be easily viewed.
- silencio 18y agoBut pretty much any browser can display PDFs just fine without having to open a separate reader, and that's the defacto format for documents on the web. Occasionally you will come across other formats like word or rtf, but there are browser-based viewers for those formats available too. I suppose that is what bothers me most about scribd. PDFs are easy to read for me in Safari, but when someone links me a scribd document, I gotta scroll both the document and the page or maximize my browser window to read a scribd document comfortably, I can't just have select text working without clicking a button, I can't view documents the way I want to (two pages side-by-side continuous). Sometimes they'll link me a scribd document of a PDF available widely from the original source, or a PDF of a webpage, and often it'll be outdated. And of course, Scribd is inaccessible with voiceover (the screenreader), which is absolutely not fantastic when the original document was fully accessible. Of course that wouldn't be a huge problem if it were simple to login, except with all the flashy web2.0 that's not terribly simple either. You can make the point that I can create a scribd login to download files, but creating a new account on a site I don't even want to visit just to download something is irritating. Definitely not my definition of "easily" viewed or a "good" experience.
- DaniFong 18y agoBrowsers used to display PDFs just fine, but Acrobat reader keeps getting crappier and crappier! It's so big and so slow!
- tptacek 18y agoGet Foxit Reader; nobody on a Mac has this problem, though.
- DaniFong 18y agoThanks for the tip. I'd like to get a Mac as soon as I can afford it, but that moment is a long time coming.
- sown 18y agoThere's also this: http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/ http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/
- tptacek 18y agoGet a refurb used first-gen Macbook; we've got every generation of Macbook at the office (company standard) and I can't tell the difference between 'em. Maybe the moment is sooner than you think!
- jd 18y ago> I don't get interrupted by having to download files and open them in another app, then close them, delete the file if I don't want it, then get back to browsing. Really? I use acrobat reader, and when I click a link the PDF just opens instantly on another monitor. If you have to manually download and open PDF files you're probably doing something wrong.