Hacker News Reader

What's with the [scribd]? Shouldn't it be [pdf]? I know what scribd is, but why use it as a tag linking to a pdf? It's misleading as scribd used a flash applet, right?

View on HN

The [scribd] text is a second link. If you click it your browser will load the pdf via scribd instead of downloading it.

I was confused at first as well, because I thought the title was a single link and the text in brackets was descriptive.

All PDFs, Docs, PPTs etc submitted on HN have the [scribd] link by default[1]. It's a way for people to view the document on their browser without having to download it first (there are still browsers out there like Firefox on OS X that do not have an in built PDF viewer)

[1] - http://www.scribd.com/doc/50406482/Hacker-News-Integrates-Wi...

Scribd also requires logging in before being able to download, so it's accurate enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com