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Off topic: Why does Scribd have a perfectly functional mobile site that allows me to read half the PDF before rudely graying out my screen and insisting that I
by mgraczyk 12y ago
Off topic: Why does Scribd have a perfectly functional mobile site that allows me to read half the PDF before rudely graying out my screen and insisting that I download their app to finish? I was reading with my phone rotated to landscape so at first I couldn't even see the pop up, the PDF just went gray. I call that borderline psychological abuse. At the very least I'm going to subconsciously associate the Scribd brand with that horrible experience.
- balazsdavid987 12y agoThe same here. Very, very frustrating.
- lelandbatey 12y agoFor years I've been avoiding Scribd. They are like experts exchange or quora: doing anything they can to get you to sign up and become beholden to their well furnished cage. Many times I've been in search of an odd PDF, found it on Scribd, only to have 99% of it unreadable. I hate Scribd.
- vidarh 12y agoI've always associated them with horrible experience. I groan whenever I see Scribd instead of just a link to the PDFs. I have a good PDF viewer, thank you. In fact, I have several.
- kefka 12y agoScribd is "Hacker News" quality. They're one of the HN venture capital funded companies. Puts a different spin on it, doesn't it?
- StavrosK 12y agoNot really. It's still a sucky site that's worse than what we had before.
- km3k 12y agoYou must have a much lower expectation of "Hacker News" quality than I do. Has scribd ever had a good user experience? I've come across them once in a while for years and never liked it at all.
- Dylan16807 12y agoNo? I don't expect every such company to be amazing.
- aranjedeath 12y agoThis. So many solutions in search of problems.
- jholman 12y agoI'm actually really unclear on what alleged value Scribd might bring to users. Why do people even use it and/or link to it? As others said, I already have a PDF reader, and unsurprisingly, it works better than Scribd.
- herge 12y agoIt's free pdf hosting.
- shiven 12y agoActually, PDFy is way, way better ... https://pdf.yt https://pdf.yt
- philo23 12y agoI believe it used to be quite useful when your only option to read PDFs was Acrobat which was slow and would often lock up your browser while the plugin loaded. Now that both Firefox and Chrome include built in PDF readers and we've also got other options like SumatraPDF, I see little value in Scribd any more.
- Torn 12y agoIt's easy to host a pdf on it. Most file sharing sites have countdowns / ads / gates to entry instead of just showing the content.
- iancarroll 12y agoExcept Scribd just doesn't show it on mobile...
- jordigh 12y ago> I'm actually really unclear on what alleged value Scribd might bring to users. Why do people even use it and/or link to it? I think it's got something to do with how it's a Y Combinator graduate.
- nsomaru 12y agoPerfectly functional? Not for me [1]. I had to open the document on a laptop because all I got on mobile was pixelated half-rendered gibberish. Attn: dang, HN should pop a dialog recommending against a submission to scribd. There's also weighing that against getting the content onto HN if scribd is the only place it is found. [1] Android 4.2.2, Firefox Android 33.1, Opera Mini 7.6.1
- aragot 12y agokefka said: > Scribd is "Hacker News" quality. They're one of the HN venture capital funded companies. I agree with @nsomaru that it would be great to submit PDFs rather that Scribd links, especially since the HN guidelines say the original document should be submitted. On the other hand, I'm not sure if HN wants to bypass a YC-funded company.
- zentiggr 12y agoI don't think it should make any difference what relations the companies have. Scribd was less bad than Adobe plugin lockups. Scribd is more bad than current solutions. They can improve their experience, or not. Right now, I don't see the usefulness.
- wahnfrieden 12y agoHN rehosts PDF links on Scribd, last I checked.
- aranjedeath 12y agoI mean except that it's not actually meant to be a pdf host. Hasn't been in years. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8034431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8034431
- deong 12y agoI opened it on my desktop, and I for one thought the 720 point font was a lovely and refreshing departure from the standard web-presented text so many sites seem to lazily impose on us. :/
- CalRobert 12y agoBecause OMG APPS! Seriously, apps are great but 90% of the apps out there would be just fine as mobile websites.
- joshstrange 12y agoScribd is a terrible service and never once in my life have I said "oh good a Scribd link!". Every modern browser has a PDF viewer built in and I would hope people on HN are using updated browsers. It continues to baffle me as to why people use Scribd.