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This is amazing work, and this space desperately needs an open-source solution! The signing experience could use some polish, but it's well on its way. A few t
by btown 3y ago
This is amazing work, and this space desperately needs an open-source solution!
The signing experience could use some polish, but it's well on its way. A few things: clicking a signature field immediately opens a file upload despite the very functional draw-your-signature canvas. Focusing to type into a field scrolls the page not so the field is in view, but so it's at the top of the viewport, which prevents the reader from seeing the paragraph of context above the field. And minimizing the bottom panel where you type fields should be unminimized if you click another field, otherwise it can cause non-technical users to feel "stuck." Oh, and in terms of demonstrations, the demo PDF should likely be a (fake) legal contract of some sort, to show off how things can be positioned in a realistic document!
If there's one thing I'd suggest you implement, though, it would be the ability to embed the signing interface in an iframe whose URL can be parameterized to prefill values via the query string, e.g. following https://helpx.adobe.com/sign/adv-user/web-form/url-parameters.html https://helpx.adobe.com/sign/adv-user/web-form/url-parameter.... (Oh, and postMessage to the parent page when signing is done so the interface can react to that!)
So many real-world workflows can be handled with a simple wizard that pre-populates a PDF to sign, with the values from that wizard. But most of the solutions out there charge an arm and a leg for this, with large minimum order sizes and even charging for the view even if the user doesn't complete the form! Not to mention that letting people self-host, thereby avoiding third-party cookie issues, makes things significantly more accessible.
Really looking forward to how this progresses!
- somery 3y agoThanks for the feedback! All your UI suggestions/fixes make sense and will definitely be brought into the the tool soon! Also I like the idea of using some 'fake' legal document for the demo. Regarding the iframe - i've been thinking about creating an npm package for better integration with the host app - but maybe giving an option to use iframe should be available as well for companies that don't have developers to implement a better integration with the npm package.
- mycall 3y agoiframes generators are great so IT departments can hand off the html to their web support vendors (it is just a blob of text to some IT teams).
- btown 3y agoNot to mention making this system usable by folks who haven't ever used modern JS tooling, but who are trying to string together no-code/low-code tools/form builders/Wordpress plugins to automate their workflows and be able to do more creative things with their time!