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designtofly

For those of you who dislike Scribd as much as I do, here's a direct link to author's website and pdf:

http://www.physics.gatech.edu/frog/How%20to%20Publish%20a%20...

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I wish there was a bot that replied with a link like this to every scribd thread

Thank you.

What's not to like about scribd? It seems to do the job just fine...

Scribd is a step backwards. If they wanted to create value, they could HTMLify PDFs (similar to the Gmail feature or the Google preview page) instead of showing them in a stupid flash window.

You just brought up a great idea. Google can do it, but on a limited basis. A startup that could convert pdfs, word documents, and latex files directly to HTML+CSS, with negligible loss of quality, would be MASSIVE.

Of course, this requires browsers to standardize, and step 0 is for IE6/IE7 to disappear off the face of the earth. And if IE8 can't keep up with the other browsers, then it should go too.

Seriously, what you propose would be super useful.

What's wrong with PDF? It's an open standard and displays beautifully on screen or in print. I can resize it to any size and it still renders perfectly (except for embedded bitmaps of course). I'd much rather read a book in PDF format on my screen then have to hope that a website renders properly at a size that is comfortable for reading.

The main downsides to PDF are that it is not supported in all browsers, especially mobile or embedded ones and even in the browsers where it is supported, it is implemented as a plugin and so is slow to load.

PDFs open in 3sec on this computer. That seems small, but html+css pages open almost instantly.

There are lots of nice things about PDF, but when almost everything else I'm viewing is html+css it's unpleasant.

"PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation."

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html

I don't agree. I can't reformat PDFs. I can't apply my own style sheets. If it's in two columns, I'm just screwed. With a website, I can resize the text, I can edit the style, etc.

Nothing is wrong with PDF. This would provide some pretty useful options, though.

http://pdfmenot.com/ ?

1) The screen area I could have been using to read the document has been eroded by: 2 lots of ads, A top nav. bar, and a related document panel.

2) The embedded flash app. appears to consume a lot of cycles.

3) 'Scrollbars within scrollbars' make me unreasonably angry - I want to read a document, not perform keyhole surgery.

I'm not saying any other readers are perfect, but I would say that scribd is not leading the field.

Not to mention that it's completely broken in Chrome on linux. The only thing I could do to read it was click on the document and use the down arrow or page down button. I should've googled the name before submitting the scribd link I guess. Next time.

Read http://blog.bradgessler.com/i-dont-get-scribd

In the same way a service that you dial to speak to an operator who dials the number you want would "do the job just fine".

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