

Crocodoc (YC W10) Launches HTML5-Based Document Viewer With Its Own API - NSMeta
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/crocodoc-launches-html5-based-document-viewer-with-annotations-embeds-and-its-own-api/

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andrewce
My writing group uses Crocodoc when we exchange drafts and provide feedback.
Keeping all of the annotations in one place means that I don't have to worry
about having 4 different copies of a document (each one commented on by a
different person) floating around my e-mail or hard drive.

In fact, this is a service I'd gladly pay for if the folks at Crocodoc would
give me a way to do so.

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defroost
From the article: "In other words, you now have one less reason to fire up
your bloated copy of Adobe Acrobat."

Using OSX's Preview PDF reader, I haven't used Adobe Acrobat for years.
Preview is fast-loading, and has all the features one could want in a desktop
PDF reader.

But for a browser-based reader, I could see Crocodoc being useful and
certainly the interface is well-done.

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andrewce
I love Preview, but have found that when I use the annotation feature and send
it to others who use other PDF viewers (FoxIt, Acrobat Reader, et al) that the
annotations don't always behave like they should.

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chwahoo
This looks nice! I've long wanted a PDF viewer that had annotations that
appeared off to the side and could be annotated collaboratively so I'm very
excited to see that crocodoc has made progress in that direction.

Some misc. comments:

* The "chrome" isn't very android friendly. I'd really like to have something like this that would work well on a mobile device. In fact, it would be nice to have a full mobile app allowing local annotation/syncing with your web service. Currently, I just tried the site on my phone, but I have an android tablet coming soon and will be looking for a good pdf reading/annotating experience.

* When you download a marked up pdf file, it would be awesome if the notes could be included (possibly by shrinking the original document a bit. (or are the currently included and evince is failing to show them?)

* Syncing all of a users docs/annotations with Dropbox would be a killer feature. I really like this trend towards apps using Dropbox as user-owned cloud storage. (Dropbox isn't perfect for this, but is pretty nice).

* A bit more esoteric: many of the documents I read are two-column. It would be amazing if crocodoc could show just one column at a time to provide bigger text and more room for annotation. I've toyed with putting together some simple tools to display pdfs in this way, but never had the gumption to make something that worked.

Anyways, I'll definitely be following crocodoc.

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asnyder
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but Vuzit (<http://www.vuzit.com>) has been
offering a similar service, including its own API for years.

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rdamico
Fair point as far as image-based document viewers are concerned. See response
on this post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2226889>

EDIT: To clarify, I'm a co-founder of Crocodoc and answered the same question
on a parallel thread (with a side by side comparison).

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kin
I've been a beta tester for a while now and I gotta say, these guys really
listen to their users' feedback.

For me, I've use it to critique websites and essays. The annotations are
great. I've also used it simply just to load a large PDF 'cause it scrolls
through it faster (35MB limit).

Congrats Crocodoc Team!

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christkv
I'm confused is this not what scribd does ?

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netghost
I actually met one of the guys from crocodoc a couple of months ago, nice guy.
The headline isn't very accurate. My understanding is that they let people
annotate pdfs and share those annotations.

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jamesbritt
Yes, it's quite slick. I've been building a Ruby library for it and I'm using
it as part of a conference management Web application.

The annotations part is really nice, makes it very handy for reviewing
technical papers.

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jonny_eh
I love this site for the name alone! The web app's intelligently designed and
is the next evolution in digital documents.

Reference: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocoduck>

