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Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

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Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#11

Post by ken »

xlnt wrote: post #10
ken wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the magic? I just don't get it. (Maybe I am stupid; I'll admit that much.) From what I've seen, it looks like a Flash plugin to view PDFs. It breaks my scroll-wheel and keyboard shortcuts, uses funny-looking controls, and it takes as long to load the Flash plugin as it would have to just load the whole PDF. I always edit the URL so I can view the PDF normally. I don't know why I'd want to do this to m…

doesn't in-browser pdf viewing suck apart from safari?

Probably -- I wouldn't know -- but I much prefer it even when Firefox opens a PDF in Preview or Evince than trying to use iPaper. The two most common things I do with a PDF, scrolling and searching, work exactly the same there as in the browser.

Breaking a man's keyboard shortcuts and scroll-wheel is the webpage equivalent of kicking him in the nuts. It just ain't right.

Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#12

Post by paul9290 »

dshah wrote: post #4
michelson01 wrote: post #2

yeah, this is using alexa rankings, so it's far from perfect and misses a lot of other data, so take it for what it's worth.

Alexa did a major update to it's ranking algorithm and source data yesterday. It's supposedly a lot better.

yes ... though it depends who you ask. Many like hacker news rankings went down. Was 14K two days ago... now 77K, while looking down next to my alexa toolbar ranking of this site I have the compete toolbar that says hacker news is ranked 25K. Though compete only measures US traffic, best of my knowledge. Scribd was ranked 900 something now its 500 something. Congrat to Ed K and the Scribd team!

Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#16

Post by amichail »

xlnt wrote: post #10
ken wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the magic? I just don't get it. (Maybe I am stupid; I'll admit that much.) From what I've seen, it looks like a Flash plugin to view PDFs. It breaks my scroll-wheel and keyboard shortcuts, uses funny-looking controls, and it takes as long to load the Flash plugin as it would have to just load the whole PDF. I always edit the URL so I can view the PDF normally. I don't know why I'd want to do this to m…

doesn't in-browser pdf viewing suck apart from safari?

I don't understand scribd's popularity. What's wrong with pdfs?

Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#17

Post by mattmaroon »

markbao wrote: post #13

Scribd looks great, but Basecamp is down at 70262, probably since it uses subdomains. Full aggregated traffic for Basecamp and other 37signals properties would probably put it higher up on the list.

Highly doubt it. They have a lot of signups, but I bet a lot fewer active users. Scribd claims over 17m uniques a month.

Though I bet 37 Signals financial statement looks a lot better.

Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#18

Post by xlnt »

amichail wrote: post #16
xlnt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't in-browser pdf viewing suck apart from safari?

I don't understand scribd's popularity. What's wrong with pdfs?

i never liked acrobat reader on windows much. maybe that's it? or people just don't know where to host their pdfs. or don't know how to make pdfs.

Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#19

Post by amichail »

xlnt wrote: post #18
amichail wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand scribd's popularity. What's wrong with pdfs?

i never liked acrobat reader on windows much. maybe that's it? or people just don't know where to host their pdfs. or don't know how to make pdfs.

So maybe the popularity comes out of ignorance?

Re: Scribd is now the largest Rails site on the Internet (using Alexa rankings)

#20

Post by rms »

xlnt wrote: post #18
amichail wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand scribd's popularity. What's wrong with pdfs?

i never liked acrobat reader on windows much. maybe that's it? or people just don't know where to host their pdfs. or don't know how to make pdfs.

Definitely... the .pdf readers in OSX and Linux work much better.

The .pdf reader in Windows that feels the most like a *nix .pdf reader is Foxit PDF. The Foxit PDF editor is also pretty nice, it lets you edit .pdfs at a relatively low level of markup and spacing.

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