OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/23257/Scribd_Switches_to_HTML5_Adobe_To_Make_Tools_for_HTML5 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sat, 18 May 2013 15:16:52 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422909 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422909 Good news, although I'm sure scribd will still suck.

More to the point though, what exactly are they doing now that couldn't be done with HTML4? Google's PDF quickview seems to manage fine without HTML5 or flash. Thu, 06 May 2010 10:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Timmmm) Comments RE: Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422911 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422911
Good news, although I'm sure scribd will still suck.


I just used the Flash version for the first time, and indeed sucks. But why would the new "Still suck"? Is there something about Scribd I don't know? I didn't know what it was until just now.

More to the point though, what exactly are they doing now that couldn't be done with HTML4? Google's PDF quickview seems to manage fine without HTML5 or flash.


Google's PDF quickview is just that - displaying a PDF in a frame. Scribd's produces an actual web page. That's quite something different.Edited 2010-05-06 10:06 UTC Thu, 06 May 2010 10:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE: Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422916 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422916 Exactly. There is no need to use HTML5 in order to provide documents 'as web pages'. Documents are not applications, HTML5 is about applications mostly.

If only the web browsers supported CSS2.1 we'd have additionally nice printing support (table of contents, splitting into pages, indexes etc). But instead we have this crazy race/buzz regarding HTML5. Thu, 06 May 2010 10:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wojnicki) Comments RE: Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422917 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422917 Unless they're using html canvas to achieve the layout, then you're probably right: this could be done with html4.1 and a few CSS3 properties (such as css3 text columns http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/ )

I'm curious to see a page using the non-flash technique... Thu, 06 May 2010 10:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Torrance) Comments RE[2]: Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422932 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422932 Hmm, I thought they used Flash to prevent copying text.

I'm curious as well. I figure that any scheme they implement will have some form of DRM (to keep content providers happy).Edited 2010-05-06 11:30 UTC Thu, 06 May 2010 11:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Preston5) Comments ummmm... who cares? http://www.osnews.com/thread?422935 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422935 For god sakes ... you guys always make a big deal of this nonsense. You realize this is just the free market taking it's course.. I do realize that many of you don't believe in the free market (although you say you do), but yeah ...... the market works itself out. Thu, 06 May 2010 11:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (re_re) Comments RE[2]: Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422936 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422936 Urgh. Know that all too well. I was battling with pathetic printing support in Firefox 1.0 and I'm still battling with it now. _All_ browsers suck at printing. It's not an exciting area, but it has got to mature if HTML is going to start replacing native apps. Thu, 06 May 2010 11:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE: ummmm... who cares? http://www.osnews.com/thread?422943 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422943 [ somewhat offtopic ramblings coming up, you've been warned ;) ]

Well, that's very liberal thinking, some might actually agree with that, I also partially do. But the fact is, sometimes you can see decisions being made that can lead to such wide changes in the web landscape that [could] result in something not all of us would like to see. E.g. changing certain ways of doing things into solutions that either [could] make the web a more closed and constrained environment, or leading to adoption of formats and delivery methods that point to a selected few holding the control in their hands.

In the case of scribd using flash or html5 to display textual contents in a closed-down format, it's not a big deal, since in essence from the point of view of the users not much changes. But, as just one superficial example, content filtering in all-html5 pages will be much more harder than now with flash. Same thing going around around h.264/free alternatives, from the typical enduser point of view not much change, but in general we could end up in a cell not easy to move around in.

Back to the let the market drive thought, in the above cases it's not really the market that drives these things, it's the desires of certain companies to have tighter control over certain aspects of web content delivery, and them trying to convince others that their solutions actually try to solve some problems that we have. But it's very seldom their problems coincide with the average users' problems.Edited 2010-05-06 12:57 UTC Thu, 06 May 2010 12:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (l3v1) Comments RE[2]: ummmm... who cares? http://www.osnews.com/thread?422944 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422944
content filtering in all-html5 pages will be much more harder than now with flash


I can tell you now it's not. Try the Element Hiding Helper addon for AdBlock Plus. Click an element and you can hide it, or customise the CSS selector to target it.

HTML content gives us far more control over what content we see than any technology before it. You can veto anything and reshape anything according to tastes.

For example, see what I've done here: http://camendesign.com/art/if-i-designed-engadget. With Flash, it's all or nothing. Thu, 06 May 2010 13:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments Innovation http://www.osnews.com/thread?422946 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422946 Wow, providing documents as web pages written in HTML, what a novel idea. Thu, 06 May 2010 13:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (qbast) Comments RE: ummmm... who cares? http://www.osnews.com/thread?422956 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422956 WTF it is not the free market, it's the hand of god. If god didn't decided so, it would not be so you idiot.
Or is it Gaïa?

Please get a brain man. The free market isn't the almighty force that will provide us with naked virgins and save us from the wrath of Satan. Thu, 06 May 2010 15:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (spiderman) Comments RE[2]: Scribd sucks. http://www.osnews.com/thread?422960 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422960
Google's PDF quickview is just that - displaying a PDF in a frame. Scribd's produces an actual web page. That's quite something different.


I don't quite follow you. Google's PDF quickview is 'an actual web page'. It doesn't even use any plugins, unlike Scribd. Thu, 06 May 2010 15:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Timmmm) Comments RE[3]: Scribd sucks. - it can be copied http://www.osnews.com/thread?422964 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422964 If you can view it on your computer, you can copy it. Even if that means feeding your speaker out into an audio in on a recording device or, in this case, running screenshots through an OCR. (man, one would really have to want the text to OCR screenshots though) Thu, 06 May 2010 15:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jabbotts) Comments But what will it work on? http://www.osnews.com/thread?422971 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422971 Great - it will work on the iPad, but is it going to be broken on FireFox and Opera?

Perhaps I should say more broken.

Scribd is a DRMvelope pretending to be a publishing site. Thu, 06 May 2010 16:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomz) Comments so what... http://www.osnews.com/thread?422989 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422989 honestly I surf the web a lot (!) and I probably ended up on scribd twice... and never got anything useful out of it...

I hope you don't intent to make a news story of every single website which make a change... Thu, 06 May 2010 17:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ikshaar) Comments Great news http://www.osnews.com/thread?422995 http://www.osnews.com/thread?422995 Now I can finally use scribd. Thu, 06 May 2010 18:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (error32) Comments Nice, and slight confusion. http://www.osnews.com/thread?423118 http://www.osnews.com/thread?423118 Very good news. I would like to thanks Scribd team behind this!

I have really pain reading this documents on scribd with flash, now it is much better.

As of technology. What features of HTML5 was used which have not been in previous HTML and JS? I find HTML5 buzz getting tension sometimes without technical reason behind it. By technical i mean that some people call HTML5 even "standard" Web 2.0 pages. To call something HTML5 it needs to use some new feature of HTML5 which was not available previously. This includes: video or audio tag, geolocation API, canvas, webgl, local storage, WebSQL, asynchronous JS, or some new markup tags (which isn't really very important technically).


So why it is called HTML5 here and there? Fri, 07 May 2010 10:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (baryluk) Comments What features of HTML5 are they using? http://www.osnews.com/thread?423151 http://www.osnews.com/thread?423151 What features of HTML5 are they using that are not already available in HTML 4? Fri, 07 May 2010 13:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (behrangsa) Comments RE: What features of HTML5 are they using? http://www.osnews.com/thread?423268 http://www.osnews.com/thread?423268 Web-fonts is 1 feature that is pretty new.
If you want to see Scribd in HTML5 in action, check out http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5 Sat, 08 May 2010 17:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TommyCarlier) Comments RE[2]: ummmm... who cares? http://www.osnews.com/thread?423290 http://www.osnews.com/thread?423290

Back to the let the market drive thought, in the above cases it's not really the market that drives these things,


The market is there, the problem is that it doesn't value the same things that you do.

For example even though Silverlight is technically superior to Flash it is still having problems getting adopted since the install base of Flash is of greater value to companies than any technical advantages that Silverlight offers.

Good enough tech + high install base is typically favored by the market over better tech + low install base. Sat, 08 May 2010 20:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nt_jerkface) Comments