

Feedback: PDFAmigo.com, easy, online PDF form creation - gz

Hello everyone,<p>I would very much appreciate your always thoughtful feedback on my web app:<p>http://www.pdfamigo.com<p>Please use the invite code "hackernews" (sans quotes.)<p>This is the very first public release of the app and I am sure there a lot of things to be improved and fixed. Frankly, I am feeling quite nervous submitting this for public scrutiny. At the same time I believe it's at a stage where user feedback is crucial both for fixing bugs and determining where to go from here.<p>I have tried to test the app with FF3.0/3.5, IE 7 and Safari 3/4. If you are using other browsers I'd love to hear about your experience. Honestly, I am not very optimistic about IE6.<p>Eventually, this is something I'd like to charge for. What are your thoughts on that? Would you pay a few bucks per form? Do you think a subscription model would work better? I am all ears.<p>Many thanks in advance.
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patio11
Don't start users with a blank sheet of paper. Give them some indication as to
what to do next -- for example, starting them off with an in-progress document
or giving explicit "Click this, click this, click this" direction on the
sidebar.

If you're worried about screwing up their work flow you can use heuristics to
figure if they're still newbies and, if so, give them the prompting. (My
online app figures you're a newbie until you save your first document, and
continues prompting appropriately. Five lines of Rails code plus the template,
doubles the percentage of users who successfully save a card.)

Can you figure out a way to do live preview prior to hitting the Apply button?
I know, having done it, that it is NO FUN whatsoever to code, but it is a HUGE
win in terms of usability. Users are spoiled by years of using MS Word which
gives instant visual feedback for every action -- you should try to be more
like Word.

You might consider a drag&drop metaphor for putting elements on the page. At
present you click a button and they get thrown into the top left corner, which
might cause them to cover an element already there and will always require
repositioning. This is friction, consider eliminating it.

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gz
Thank you patio11. That's a great tip (starting non-empty) - more so given
that it's backed by actual data from your site.

[I have edited the following paragraph a few times revising my understanding
of the definition of live-preview as I go along] With regards to the live
preview: by live-preview do you mean editing the text in rich-text editor
fashion within the actual page? Or, just applying attributes as they are
changed in the attribute editor without the user having to click the "Apply"
button? The former would be hard I guess. The latter should be easy.

Regarding element placement, it can be confusing right now. You might be
scrolled down all the way, add a text field and not even notice because it's
placed in the top-left corner. Drag and drop would be the way to go.

Thanks, these are subtle yet crucual points you're making - your experience is
invaluable.

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boryas
The UI is super slick. In that regard, I would say I like it better than
something like Adobe's form Designer.

I would suggest trying to add more objects, like tables and such to make it
easier for people to make the form they want. Maybe something like an option
to make custom objects made of other objects? Also, being able to fill the
form from existing data is useful too. If someone wants a form that
dynamically grow depending on how much input there is, I'm not sure how
PDFAmigo handles that, if at all. For instance something like an order form,
where a user would want to be able to order 1 thing or 100 different things
(which could mean multiple pages, etc...)

With all that said, this is a really nice polished product, and the interface
you have so far is a pleasure to use, great job!

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gz
Boryas thanks so much for the feedback.

These are all really great points you are making. I am indeed working on
adding UI features like the ones you mentioned. I just want to make sure that
they are built on solid foundations and that's why I asked for feedback at
this point in time.

As for the 1 vs 100 lines in a text field, good observation. It is an omission
on my behalf as I forgot to enable multiline text fields. I will fix it asap.

Thanks again!

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HoneyAndSilicon
I'm wondering: what's your target audience? That would influence my
suggestions. But generally I'd strongly second the "don't start with blank
page."

Would a few examples of a range of possible end products possible (even just
screen shots) help noobs envision the usefulness of it. [sorry if that's
getting you into marketing issues (?prematurely?).]

Maybe noobs could even be shown an editable example (eventually: _several_
examples to choose from - templates essentially) to play around with: i.e., a
"sandbox".

Nice work!

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gz
Hmmm, good question. I think my target audience may be a bit too broad (I
hope!) to define... but I am sure there is a lot of companies that produce PDF
forms all the time. So, in a sense, I am mostly targeting businesses rather
than individuals.

In any case, form examples, screenshots, etc are an absolute necessity so
thanks for pointing that out.

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HoneyAndSilicon
Yes, good luck with it. A challenging project to bite off without a doubt -
but some awesome potential.

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a-priori
I whipped up a quick sample and tried to save the PDF, but it came out
corrupted (Preview refused to open it). Here's the document I made:
[http://www.pdfamigo.com/edit?document_id=aghwZGZhbWlnb3IOCxI...](http://www.pdfamigo.com/edit?document_id=aghwZGZhbWlnb3IOCxIIRG9jdW1lbnQYSww)

In case it's useful to you, here's the PDF that it generated:
<http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2779/pdfamigo.pdf>

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gz
Thanks a lot. That's very useful. I've mainly used Acrobat Reader to test the
generated PDFs but they should really work everywhere.

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gz
Just an update: I have fixed this and your PDFs should work with Preview now.
I had accidentally commented out a fairly crucial line of code residing very
close to a not so crucial line of code... ugh.

Having said that, Preview is not the best in rendering PDF forms
unfortunately...

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JimmyL
If you're going to have a _show gridlines_ option (Good Thing), you should
probably have a _snap to grid_ option for the form elements, so people don't
have to stare at the screen and jiggle their mouse to make it all line up.

~~~
gz
I tried to implement that using jquery but it proved to be tricky. Still, no
excuse. It's on the todo list! Thank you.

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growt
I think there is a usecase/market where you offer an HTML-Interface to the
form and save/send the results as pdf. Imagine a job-application form at a big
company where the applicants can fill the form online but the HR guys get
mailed a pdf (which they are used to). Maybe its out of scope for this site,
but if you have the technology you may start another one.

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gz
Your suggestion is spot on. Form distribution and data collection is part of
the plan. This is one of the features I am thinking of charging for.

The tricky part I believe is secure handling of user data as these form can
contain sensitive stuff...

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secret
link: <http://www.pdfamigo.com>

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utsmokingaces
Simple and intuitive. The UI is fast. Not much more to ask.

You should submit it to <http://AppUseful.com>

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gz
Thanks for the suggestion. Will do.

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igorgomes
Better if possible to group multiple choices and rename fields.

Best,

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gz
Thanks for the feedback. Great idea for streamlining the UI.

