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Agreed. > "I can’t save it like the PDF. I can’t print the whole thing. Fk, I can’t even copy and paste!" But I can READ it much more easily. And 90% of the

by aneesh 18y ago

Agreed. > "I can’t save it like the PDF. I can’t print the whole thing. Fk, I can’t even copy and paste!" But I can READ it much more easily. And 90% of the time, all I want to do is read it. Take a quick glance at it, maybe skim it. And Scribd means I don't have to fire up a PDF viewer just to do that. The Flash videos analogy is apt. Youtube's flash videos aren't good for movie watching, or downloading videos, but they're perfect for quick 30-second clips. That's what Scribd is for documents.

axod 18y ago
This may be true on windows machines, but on OS X, or the iPhone, the experience is reversed - clicking on a pdf is a very fast easy operation, allowing you to read the document easily and quickly with all the functionality you expect. The scribd link results in a hideous looking font shown in a slow loading flash app. (Or on the iphone, nothing) - try scrolling in their scribd flash app - Serious Lag. Windows does not have a built in pdf viewer, and the pdf viewers you can get aren't good. But the solution seems totally wrong. The real solution is to make a really nice pdf viewer plugin for windows.
- apsurd 18y ago
  http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php It is lightning fast.
silencio 18y ago
The definition of "reading easily" is subjective. As I noted in my other comment here, Scribd is not very accessible with what is arguably the only screenreader for OS X, while the original documents (pdf, word, ppt, excel, txt, etc.) were. Not to mention iPaper is flash, which means there's an additional dependency before viewing the document (an issue that could be ignored if it wasn't for the limitations of some platforms like wii and iPhone, but lack of flash/flash lite for iPhone OS is a rant for another day). And speaking of OS X, "firing up a viewer" and bloat makes no sense with PDFKit in Safari where for me downloading and displaying the PDF in my browser is just as fast if not faster than scribd for a lot of the documents I'm looking at. If you were using the embed/email/social aspects of scribd, then fantastic, but scribd gives me nothing useful otherwise and instead just pisses me off with the various problems one can and does encounter. Youtube succeeded because Real, Apple and Microsoft had a fragmented market with all sorts of formats for video, and no central place to aggregate these videos (with the exception of, say, Apple's movie trailers page). Flash videos became popular because nobody had the patience to download entire videos before watching them, or to install RealPlayer/Quicktime/Windows Media Player and have a subpar experience as a result. Put youtube and flash video together and the answer is obvious. However, you don't have the same kind of issue with PDF except for certain bloated viewers on certain platforms and subpar integration (which, I admit, the embed feature of scribd can come in handy occasionally). If your argument were about powerpoint presentations nobody bothered to export to web/pdf, I would then agree that this type of service is useful, but I would also like to point out slideshare. Slideshare does have an accessible website to a large extent and provides a service not well served on any platform. I'm aware Scribd does PPTs too, but I feel Slideshare displays and handles them better. Scribd could learn a thing or two from them.

by aneesh 18y ago

axod 18y ago

This may be true on windows machines, but on OS X, or the iPhone, the experience is reversed - clicking on a pdf is a very fast easy operation, allowing you to read the document easily and quickly with all the functionality you expect. The scribd link results in a hideous looking font shown in a slow loading flash app. (Or on the iphone, nothing) - try scrolling in their scribd flash app - Serious Lag. Windows does not have a built in pdf viewer, and the pdf viewers you can get aren't good. But the solution seems totally wrong. The real solution is to make a really nice pdf viewer plugin for windows.

apsurd 18y ago
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php It is lightning fast.

silencio 18y ago

The definition of "reading easily" is subjective. As I noted in my other comment here, Scribd is not very accessible with what is arguably the only screenreader for OS X, while the original documents (pdf, word, ppt, excel, txt, etc.) were. Not to mention iPaper is flash, which means there's an additional dependency before viewing the document (an issue that could be ignored if it wasn't for the limitations of some platforms like wii and iPhone, but lack of flash/flash lite for iPhone OS is a rant for another day). And speaking of OS X, "firing up a viewer" and bloat makes no sense with PDFKit in Safari where for me downloading and displaying the PDF in my browser is just as fast if not faster than scribd for a lot of the documents I'm looking at. If you were using the embed/email/social aspects of scribd, then fantastic, but scribd gives me nothing useful otherwise and instead just pisses me off with the various problems one can and does encounter. Youtube succeeded because Real, Apple and Microsoft had a fragmented market with all sorts of formats for video, and no central place to aggregate these videos (with the exception of, say, Apple's movie trailers page). Flash videos became popular because nobody had the patience to download entire videos before watching them, or to install RealPlayer/Quicktime/Windows Media Player and have a subpar experience as a result. Put youtube and flash video together and the answer is obvious. However, you don't have the same kind of issue with PDF except for certain bloated viewers on certain platforms and subpar integration (which, I admit, the embed feature of scribd can come in handy occasionally). If your argument were about powerpoint presentations nobody bothered to export to web/pdf, I would then agree that this type of service is useful, but I would also like to point out slideshare. Slideshare does have an accessible website to a large extent and provides a service not well served on any platform. I'm aware Scribd does PPTs too, but I feel Slideshare displays and handles them better. Scribd could learn a thing or two from them.