

Thoughts on Scribd's move to HTML5 - trun
http://www.marathonmuse.com/blog/2010/5/8/thoughts-on-scribd.html

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qhoxie
I posted this on the site, but figured it might be of interest here as well:

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Trevor,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. You captured some of the interesting aspects
and obstacles we had to overcome in order to realize the HTML based viewer.
I'd like to add some commentary on the points you bring up:

\- Performance: I'm quite excited about the range of possibilities we have in
improving the performance of the new viewer. It's something we discuss
endlessly, and it will just be a matter of time before we can implement some
more of the ideas we have tossed around.

\- Text Selection: We lose some control on this by handing it all over to the
browser; which I like. I see what you mean by Acrobat Reader being the gold
standard, but the reality of the range of document types we get means that
there is no definite standard of behavior therein. That said, I would love to
hear some suggestions for creative/usable spins we could put on this.

\- Search: Another one that us engineers are immensely excited about. We have
so much flexibility. While there are technical challenges, the user experience
surrounding the search functionality we have planned should be very
impressive.

\- Printing: I haven't personally put much thought into the browser based
printing, but it should be a simple step with what we already have (as you
said). As for flash based printing, I don't know the details, but one of our
engineers apparently did some great work on this recently. If you want more
details, I can see about putting you in contact with him.

Thanks again for the thoughts. This is an exciting time for these technologies
and document presentation.

-Quin

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armandososa
Wow! I came to the article expecting a lot of mindless bashing from the flash
camp, but this turned out a thoughtful article.

I don't care that much about text selection, but resolving hyphenation on copy
sounds like a must-have feature for me.

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mikelikespie
Very good observations. The feedback will help us.

