4 ms·

Crocodoc (YC W10) Launches Preview of Revamped HTML5 Document Converter

63 points by rdamico 14y ago

onemorepassword 14y ago
Deeply impressed by the product, but I hate it when pricing is hidden behind "contact our sales team". That usually equals "let's first see how deep your pockets are". Also a tactic often used by companies that keep you paying the original rates while their actual pricing for new clients have dropped considerably.
- zbruhnke 14y ago
  As someone who has met the guys on the team and know them on a business and personal level that's just not the case. They have been so focused on building out a kickass product that even the small things like a pricing page have been put on the back burner for now. I know reaching out can be a pain, but these guys will iron that part of the process out as well. For now it's definitely worth your while to reach out and have a chat with them!
  - tghw 14y ago
    It'll be far cheaper for them to make a pricing page than to be answering all of the inquiries.
goronbjorn 14y ago
Is this what powers the new Dropbox Preview?
- newtonapple 14y ago
  It seems like Dropbox is using the native Chrome PDF viewer on Chrome and PDF.js on Firefox for PDF files.
  - goronbjorn 14y ago
    But they're doing some conversion on the for .doc/.xls files to output a pdf. Also, Crocodoc lists them as a customer.
davidu 14y ago
This is impressive: https://crocodoc.com/see-it-in-action/ https://crocodoc.com/see-it-in-action/ I'm glad there is someone who wakes up every morning really excited about taking some of the worst, most broken, least documented, and eye-gauging binary yet immensely popular file formats in the world (PDF, XLS, PPT, DOC), and turning them into sane documents for viewing on all my screens. That's impressive.
- goronbjorn 14y ago
  While that's impressive, that's not even the new version. The new conversion is here: https://preview.crocodoc.com/ https://preview.crocodoc.com/
  - dguaraglia 14y ago
    Wow. That's amazing.
- dguaraglia 14y ago
  Couldn't agree more. As someone who did, back in the day, dabble with the binary representation of the "composite document" format of early Word/Office files, I have to say I admire the work they've done. Even the newer, XML-based version of the document formats suck.
- clicks 14y ago
  Indeed really nice, and happy that they're doing this -- I absolutely love the idea. But please don't making the viewing application be a constricted frame of a sort, that I have to use the nested scroll bar for. Let it encompass the entire page... otherwise it's just too small to comfortably see. I have the same issue with scribd. I prefer Google's PDF preview for this reason (complain with that is when I do ctrl + to enlarge, the toolbar panel is also enlarged and occupies too much of the screenspace). I'm always a little bit flabbergasted that really smart folks consistently keep looking over this... I zoom into everything, and so do many other people. This is a super important readability issue.
- davidu 14y ago
  How did I spell gouging wrong? :)
TylerE 14y ago
I have to say I'm pretty blown away. I'm more or less the sole software engineer for a group of small local newspapers, and have been on the lookout for a system to replace our current flash-based e-edition reader. Crocodoc is the first conversion service I've seen that actually properly renders our PDFs. Sample: https://preview.crocodoc.com/view/183cbebf-8d01-4f5f-bb3a-5e26dc11ca60 https://preview.crocodoc.com/view/183cbebf-8d01-4f5f-bb3a-5e...
- 8ig8 14y ago
  FYI: Your sample doc keeps crashing Mobile Safari on my v1 iPad, but the official preview (https://preview.crocodoc.com/ https://preview.crocodoc.com/) seems to work fine.
  - TylerE 14y ago
    Interesting. I only checked it on a desktop and it was fine.
  - peterlai 14y ago
    Hey guys - Peter here from Crocodoc. In the official release, pages on mobile devices will be lazy-loaded to prevent the pages from using too much memory like it does on this demo here.
j_s 14y ago
Someone show this to Scribd, quick! And/or switch the Hacker News auto-Scribd-pdf-links 'feature' ASAP...

63 points by rdamico 14y ago

Deeply impressed by the product, but I hate it when pricing is hidden behind "contact our sales team". That usually equals "let's first see how deep your pockets are". Also a tactic often used by companies that keep you paying the original rates while their actual pricing for new clients have dropped considerably.

zbruhnke 14y ago
As someone who has met the guys on the team and know them on a business and personal level that's just not the case. They have been so focused on building out a kickass product that even the small things like a pricing page have been put on the back burner for now. I know reaching out can be a pain, but these guys will iron that part of the process out as well. For now it's definitely worth your while to reach out and have a chat with them!
- tghw 14y ago
  It'll be far cheaper for them to make a pricing page than to be answering all of the inquiries.

goronbjorn 14y ago

Is this what powers the new Dropbox Preview?

newtonapple 14y ago
It seems like Dropbox is using the native Chrome PDF viewer on Chrome and PDF.js on Firefox for PDF files.
- goronbjorn 14y ago
  But they're doing some conversion on the for .doc/.xls files to output a pdf. Also, Crocodoc lists them as a customer.

davidu 14y ago

This is impressive: https://crocodoc.com/see-it-in-action/ https://crocodoc.com/see-it-in-action/ I'm glad there is someone who wakes up every morning really excited about taking some of the worst, most broken, least documented, and eye-gauging binary yet immensely popular file formats in the world (PDF, XLS, PPT, DOC), and turning them into sane documents for viewing on all my screens. That's impressive.

goronbjorn 14y ago
While that's impressive, that's not even the new version. The new conversion is here: https://preview.crocodoc.com/ https://preview.crocodoc.com/
- dguaraglia 14y ago
  Wow. That's amazing.
dguaraglia 14y ago
Couldn't agree more. As someone who did, back in the day, dabble with the binary representation of the "composite document" format of early Word/Office files, I have to say I admire the work they've done. Even the newer, XML-based version of the document formats suck.
clicks 14y ago
Indeed really nice, and happy that they're doing this -- I absolutely love the idea. But please don't making the viewing application be a constricted frame of a sort, that I have to use the nested scroll bar for. Let it encompass the entire page... otherwise it's just too small to comfortably see. I have the same issue with scribd. I prefer Google's PDF preview for this reason (complain with that is when I do ctrl + to enlarge, the toolbar panel is also enlarged and occupies too much of the screenspace). I'm always a little bit flabbergasted that really smart folks consistently keep looking over this... I zoom into everything, and so do many other people. This is a super important readability issue.
davidu 14y ago
How did I spell gouging wrong? :)

TylerE 14y ago

I have to say I'm pretty blown away. I'm more or less the sole software engineer for a group of small local newspapers, and have been on the lookout for a system to replace our current flash-based e-edition reader. Crocodoc is the first conversion service I've seen that actually properly renders our PDFs. Sample: https://preview.crocodoc.com/view/183cbebf-8d01-4f5f-bb3a-5e26dc11ca60 https://preview.crocodoc.com/view/183cbebf-8d01-4f5f-bb3a-5e...

8ig8 14y ago
FYI: Your sample doc keeps crashing Mobile Safari on my v1 iPad, but the official preview (https://preview.crocodoc.com/ https://preview.crocodoc.com/) seems to work fine.
- TylerE 14y ago
  Interesting. I only checked it on a desktop and it was fine.
- peterlai 14y ago
  Hey guys - Peter here from Crocodoc. In the official release, pages on mobile devices will be lazy-loaded to prevent the pages from using too much memory like it does on this demo here.

j_s 14y ago

Someone show this to Scribd, quick! And/or switch the Hacker News auto-Scribd-pdf-links 'feature' ASAP...