Finally! A Better Alternative to PDF's
It's called iPaper.
It's a "document viewer built for the modern web. It's the first
full-featured
viewer that runs in a web page with no additional software." iPaper is
founded on the Scribd Platform, which "provides a set of tools and
documentation that allows you to easily
integrate iPaper and other Scribd features with your own website". Below is a sample document (previously a PDF) that I uploaded as a test shortly after creating an iPaper account. You can go here to see the fullscreen version that I embedded to a page on my personal webspace.
The iPaper interface is done with Flash and, as far as I can tell, offers mostly the same functionality as Adobe Reader. The key is that it's really lightweight. I can't count the number of times my browser has crashed while trying to load a PDF-viewing plug-in, and although the the filesize of PDF's is small compared to many alternatives, they can still get to be pretty hefty. iPaper, on the other hand, seems to load almost instantly, and the 16-page, highly-graphical, sample document streamed in practically no time.
At this point, you can't host iPaper directly on your own server. The system is run on a "professionally managed, highly secure server cluster, guaranteeing that your documents will be accessible and safe at all times". To compensate for this lack of control, Scibd provides an easy-to-use API that delivers "everything you could ever want to do with iPaper, document management and searching", and there's apparently no limit to how many documents you can store online.
Currently, the following file formats can be converted to iPaper:
I think this technology is very likely to catch on. It works well, and it's unbelievably easy to start using, primarily because (unlike Adobe's PDF) the format doesn't require anything but Flash. There is definitely room for minor improvement, but on the whole, good show, iPaper...good show.
The iPaper interface is done with Flash and, as far as I can tell, offers mostly the same functionality as Adobe Reader. The key is that it's really lightweight. I can't count the number of times my browser has crashed while trying to load a PDF-viewing plug-in, and although the the filesize of PDF's is small compared to many alternatives, they can still get to be pretty hefty. iPaper, on the other hand, seems to load almost instantly, and the 16-page, highly-graphical, sample document streamed in practically no time.
At this point, you can't host iPaper directly on your own server. The system is run on a "professionally managed, highly secure server cluster, guaranteeing that your documents will be accessible and safe at all times". To compensate for this lack of control, Scibd provides an easy-to-use API that delivers "everything you could ever want to do with iPaper, document management and searching", and there's apparently no limit to how many documents you can store online.
Currently, the following file formats can be converted to iPaper:
- Adobe PDF (.pdf)
- Adobe PostScript (.ps)
- Microsoft Word (.doc)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps)
- Microsoft Excel (.xls)
- OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
- OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
- OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
- All OpenDocument formats
- Plain text (.txt)
- Rich text format (.rtf)
I think this technology is very likely to catch on. It works well, and it's unbelievably easy to start using, primarily because (unlike Adobe's PDF) the format doesn't require anything but Flash. There is definitely room for minor improvement, but on the whole, good show, iPaper...good show.
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