4 ms·

Scribd Streamlines Embedded Docs With iPaper 2

25 points by trip 17y ago

mattjaynes 17y ago
Congrats JR! I know that many folks on HN much prefer raw pdf's to a flash viewer, but JR (sole programmer for iPaper) has done an amazing job single-handedly replacing a multi-billion dollar company's product: Macromedia's FlashPaper. JR is a quiet, but very friendly french canadian, an avid roller-blader, and was previously one of the programmer's on the Assassin's Creed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed ) When I worked at Scribd, JR and I shared an office while he was writing the first version of iPaper. The sheer complexity of getting all the fonts worked out and embedded images and searching and compression and streaming in the document for faster load times etc etc was quite a feat for a single developer. He would come in early and leave late, all the day working with an amazing focus. He's a real work horse. I remember when his Programming Erlang book arrived - he devoured it in a couple of days and re-architected the iPaper system to more efficiently stream the documents to the viewer. Despite the iPaper viewer being in flash, there are some very sexy technologies under the hood. Anyway, just wanted to shed some light on the guy behind the product. It's not a team of highly paid flash code monkeys - just JR quietly working away to make billion dollar company's products obsolete.
- jrbedard 17y ago
  Hi Matt, thanks but I wasn't directly involved with this new iteration of iPaper, it's the work of Ed, Michael and Barish at Scribd. Good to hear from you!, cheers :)
  - mattjaynes 17y ago
    He he, I'm clearly behind on the project changes in the last year! Either way - iPaper 1.0 was an excellent foundation :)
blasdel 17y ago
While it's nice that it doesn't look like a shit Flex app anymore, the interaction behaviors are still awful -- let me use my goddamn scroll wheel! Google's PDF viewer used for attachments in Gmail is better by leaps and bounds -- I hope they start using it in SERPs at some point. I wonder if an API could be hacked together for use from a Firefox extension...
- earl 17y ago
  In what browser does your scroll wheel not work? It works for me in firefox and safari.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    The Firefox 3 + Flash in the current Ubuntu. Something else might be fucked, as none of the buttons on it's little toolbar seem to do anything.
    - earl 17y ago
      Do you have js disabled? Will try to test on ff / ubuntu
      - blasdel 17y ago
        I do not have JS disabled, as I am not a mouthbreather. Just checked at home on Gentoo x86_64 / FF-3.0.10 / Flash-10.0.22.87 -- and got identical behavior. The old iPaper works, except that when embedded normally the scroll wheel doesn't work (but it does when viewing the swf directly). The new iPaper fails embedded or directly -- clicking / dragging and the contextual menu works, but none of the toolbar items work. Scrolling doesn't work at all.
lionheart 17y ago
Wow, this is much better. Loads quicker too.
bradgessler 17y ago
I still don't get scribd: http://blog.bradgessler.com/i-dont-get-scribd http://blog.bradgessler.com/i-dont-get-scribd
- skip 17y ago
  Can't agree more. And they want me to sign up in order to see or download a plain PDF, thats not going to happen.
  - bradgessler 17y ago
    Scribd would be much more useful if they supported predictable URLs of a document in their various formats. For example, if I uploaded My_Awesome_Document.docx, it could throw it into an URL like http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.docx http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.docx and let me enter URLs like http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.pdf http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.doc to download the various formats of the doc. an URL shortner would sweeten the deal for tweeting/sharing docs. iPaper could just be another option for sharing/embedding a doc. I'm probably just a vocal minority.

25 points by trip 17y ago

Congrats JR! I know that many folks on HN much prefer raw pdf's to a flash viewer, but JR (sole programmer for iPaper) has done an amazing job single-handedly replacing a multi-billion dollar company's product: Macromedia's FlashPaper. JR is a quiet, but very friendly french canadian, an avid roller-blader, and was previously one of the programmer's on the Assassin's Creed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed ) When I worked at Scribd, JR and I shared an office while he was writing the first version of iPaper. The sheer complexity of getting all the fonts worked out and embedded images and searching and compression and streaming in the document for faster load times etc etc was quite a feat for a single developer. He would come in early and leave late, all the day working with an amazing focus. He's a real work horse. I remember when his Programming Erlang book arrived - he devoured it in a couple of days and re-architected the iPaper system to more efficiently stream the documents to the viewer. Despite the iPaper viewer being in flash, there are some very sexy technologies under the hood. Anyway, just wanted to shed some light on the guy behind the product. It's not a team of highly paid flash code monkeys - just JR quietly working away to make billion dollar company's products obsolete.

jrbedard 17y ago
Hi Matt, thanks but I wasn't directly involved with this new iteration of iPaper, it's the work of Ed, Michael and Barish at Scribd. Good to hear from you!, cheers :)
- mattjaynes 17y ago
  He he, I'm clearly behind on the project changes in the last year! Either way - iPaper 1.0 was an excellent foundation :)

blasdel 17y ago

While it's nice that it doesn't look like a shit Flex app anymore, the interaction behaviors are still awful -- let me use my goddamn scroll wheel! Google's PDF viewer used for attachments in Gmail is better by leaps and bounds -- I hope they start using it in SERPs at some point. I wonder if an API could be hacked together for use from a Firefox extension...

earl 17y ago
In what browser does your scroll wheel not work? It works for me in firefox and safari.
- blasdel 17y ago
  The Firefox 3 + Flash in the current Ubuntu. Something else might be fucked, as none of the buttons on it's little toolbar seem to do anything.
  - earl 17y ago
    Do you have js disabled? Will try to test on ff / ubuntu
    - blasdel 17y ago
      I do not have JS disabled, as I am not a mouthbreather. Just checked at home on Gentoo x86_64 / FF-3.0.10 / Flash-10.0.22.87 -- and got identical behavior. The old iPaper works, except that when embedded normally the scroll wheel doesn't work (but it does when viewing the swf directly). The new iPaper fails embedded or directly -- clicking / dragging and the contextual menu works, but none of the toolbar items work. Scrolling doesn't work at all.

lionheart 17y ago

Wow, this is much better. Loads quicker too.

bradgessler 17y ago

I still don't get scribd: http://blog.bradgessler.com/i-dont-get-scribd http://blog.bradgessler.com/i-dont-get-scribd

skip 17y ago
Can't agree more. And they want me to sign up in order to see or download a plain PDF, thats not going to happen.
- bradgessler 17y ago
  Scribd would be much more useful if they supported predictable URLs of a document in their various formats. For example, if I uploaded My_Awesome_Document.docx, it could throw it into an URL like http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.docx http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.docx and let me enter URLs like http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.pdf http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.doc to download the various formats of the doc. an URL shortner would sweeten the deal for tweeting/sharing docs. iPaper could just be another option for sharing/embedding a doc. I'm probably just a vocal minority.