Yes, I know that scribd is a YC company, is what the cool kids use, etc. But. It. Doesn't. Actually. Work. The pdf reader I have does.
That said, I liked the article. Once I actually managed to read it.
(apologies for going off-topic - I just couldn't resist this one)
I'm on Linix,
I've tried the default readers and they are all horrific.
What would you recommend, seriously. I have never found a pleasant PDF reader on any platform but I'm open to the idea they might exist.
Also: foxit reader is a great reader for window. Not quite as polished as skim but still the best reader I have come into contact with on the windows side of the fence.
But I'd always rather have a PDF too.
I can't even view the scribd page properly. All the scripts and CSS are broken.
I'm also running the Vimperator plugin, which is why my chrome looks weird. It has literally never caused a problem in any other site though.
It was on my work computer, which I don't have access to right now. If the problem persists (it's working on my Chrome OS X home computer right now), I'll see if I can get you a ss tomorrow morning.
I've sent her an email.
It is also on slideshare, and I can upload to other desired formats.
It is originally a Microsoft PPT, as that makes the 15 seconds timing easy to enforce and practice.
Especially because you can just click the download link and get it in whatever format you want.
I was not willing to register with a non-functional website I didn't want to use. That was the point I pulled out Firefox instead.
I tried clicking. Double clicking. I tried the arrows at the bottom. (They even have nice mouse overs that say Next Page/Previous Page.) I tried changing the view type. None of these let me scroll through the presentation.
Based on other comments in this thread I tried putting my mouse on the boundaries of the image. OK, that works. It is a cool idea. But it is an interface that is different from how everything else on the web works. Once you know to do it it is easy. But it isn't exactly the easiest interface to discover when you aren't looking for it. That would be OK if it was just a backup shortcut for people who realized it. But the traditional interface that should be the primary one for people who don't know the site doesn't work. Hence the problem.
The reason that Firefox worked for me is that the browser is in a different place on the screen and therefore I naturally was over the right area of the page. So pure luck.
Incidentally this is the kind of deficiency that is better caught with usability testing than A/B testing. Take 20 people, sit them down with your website, and ask them to complete a task. See what they have trouble with. If you've never done it before you'll likely be shocked at the result.
I suspect that the bug got fixed.
The only way to go forwards I could figure out is clicking on the right side of the slide.
My general test is, if it works in 3 of the 5, then it's the other browsers' fault. There are simply too many browsers now and a I wonder sometimes if google did more harm than good by not putting more effort into one of the existing browsers than by releasing a completely new one and increasing the workload on developers.
Are they trying to further innovation or hinder it by creating one more hurdle for web developers to jump? We could make all our sites work in all the browsers, or we could spend time making more sites and bringing more value to the world. I have four browsers installed on my machine, ie, firefox, opera, and safari. I test sites in all of those. Making it work in a 5th means it might break in the other 4 and that's just ridiculous.
At some point, you have to say it's "good enough".
Also, Flash takes up insane amount of resources. The built-in PDF reader I have works perfectly.