

Scribd Streamlines Embedded Docs With iPaper 2 - trip
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/10/scribd-streamlines-embedded-docs-with-ipaper-2/

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mattjaynes
Congrats JR!

I know that many folks on HN much prefer raw pdf's to a flash viewer, but JR
(sole programmer for iPaper) has done an amazing job single-handedly replacing
a multi-billion dollar company's product: Macromedia's FlashPaper.

JR is a quiet, but very friendly french canadian, an avid roller-blader, and
was previously one of the programmer's on the Assassin's Creed (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed> )

When I worked at Scribd, JR and I shared an office while he was writing the
first version of iPaper. The sheer complexity of getting all the fonts worked
out and embedded images and searching and compression and streaming in the
document for faster load times etc etc was quite a feat for a single
developer. He would come in early and leave late, all the day working with an
amazing focus. He's a real work horse.

I remember when his Programming Erlang book arrived - he devoured it in a
couple of days and re-architected the iPaper system to more efficiently stream
the documents to the viewer. Despite the iPaper viewer being in flash, there
are some very sexy technologies under the hood.

Anyway, just wanted to shed some light on the guy behind the product. It's not
a team of highly paid flash code monkeys - just JR quietly working away to
make billion dollar company's products obsolete.

~~~
jrbedard
Hi Matt, thanks but I wasn't directly involved with this new iteration of
iPaper, it's the work of Ed, Michael and Barish at Scribd. Good to hear from
you!, cheers :)

~~~
mattjaynes
He he, I'm clearly behind on the project changes in the last year! Either way
- iPaper 1.0 was an excellent foundation :)

------
bradgessler
I still don't get scribd: <http://blog.bradgessler.com/i-dont-get-scribd>

~~~
skip
Can't agree more. And they want me to sign up in order to see or download a
plain PDF, thats not going to happen.

~~~
bradgessler
Scribd would be much more useful if they supported predictable URLs of a
document in their various formats. For example, if I uploaded
My_Awesome_Document.docx, it could throw it into an URL like
<http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.docx> and let me enter
URLs like

    
    
      http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.pdf
      http://www.scribd.com/bradgessler/My_Awesome_Document.doc
    

to download the various formats of the doc. an URL shortner would sweeten the
deal for tweeting/sharing docs. iPaper could just be another option for
sharing/embedding a doc.

I'm probably just a vocal minority.

------
blasdel
While it's nice that it doesn't look like a shit Flex app anymore, the
interaction behaviors are still awful -- let me use my goddamn scroll wheel!

Google's PDF viewer used for attachments in Gmail is better by leaps and
bounds -- I hope they start using it in SERPs at some point. I wonder if an
API could be hacked together for use from a Firefox extension...

~~~
earl
In what browser does your scroll wheel not work? It works for me in firefox
and safari.

~~~
blasdel
The Firefox 3 + Flash in the current Ubuntu.

Something else might be fucked, as none of the buttons on it's little toolbar
seem to do anything.

~~~
earl
Do you have js disabled?

Will try to test on ff / ubuntu

~~~
blasdel
I do not have JS disabled, as I am not a mouthbreather.

Just checked at home on Gentoo x86_64 / FF-3.0.10 / Flash-10.0.22.87 -- and
got identical behavior.

The old iPaper works, except that when embedded normally the scroll wheel
doesn't work (but it does when viewing the swf directly).

The new iPaper fails embedded or directly -- clicking / dragging and the
contextual menu works, but none of the toolbar items work. Scrolling doesn't
work at all.

------
lionheart
Wow, this is much better. Loads quicker too.

