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Ask HN: Review my application (2nd try).

doxela.com

8 pointsrokhayakebe26 comments

I posted this yesterday, but I believe several people missed it. So I wanted to give it another try, if you may.

Doxela.com is a very simple way to share pdfs and ppts (with soon .doc and other formats to follow). Think of it as an imgur.com for documents.

I would truly appreciate the harshest feedback.

Thank you all.

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Yikes, first of all: get a designer.

Secondly, I'm not sure what the point of this is. Doesn't Google provide sharing with Google Docs? And they even throw in a full featured word processor, presentation, and spreadsheet suite.

Yeah, the design is pretty wonky. It's a simple app: keep the design simple (as in, maybe just one color, instead of a graphic?).

I agree on the design. I am going to play with the few more options.

I find it quicker to share documents this way, than to use Google Docs.

(It uses the Google Doc Viewer Embed feature)

I can't tell what your app promises to do for me from any of the information on the front page. I can't tell what problem it tries to solve. I can't tell what would actually happen if I uploaded a file. All I know is that you want me to give you some file and it has something to do with sharing. Only, you're a third party I've never met so, why the heck would you want a copy of my file?

It may or may not solve a problem but it does tell you what it does: it helps you share ppt and powerpoint files.

From the perspective of someone encountering the site: how does it help? Why should I use your site instead of just emailing them? Or using Scribd? Or putting it on my network shared drive?

Let's say you want to share a PDF with some HN readers in a comment, you can quickly upload the document and share the view link with others. No registration, sign in and all the other stuff.

You could have the document on your server. But believe it or not, several people do not have servers to host documents they may want to share publicly.

I think if you wanted to quickly share a ppt or pdf without much control over the document, then Doxela is much faster to achieve your goal. It's like what Scribd would be if they wanted to do a lite.scribd.com.

Most PDFs I want to share are taken from an online source, so I'd just link to that source.

When it isn't, it's usually a document that I'm sharing with a couple people (I would email it).

I don't remember the last time that I needed to share a document publicly that I didn't just find online. Since this is such a rare occasion, I probably wouldn't remember this site and just use something more general like dropbox.

I don't really see much advantage of this over dropbox. Actually, I prefer my pdf reader over google's since the find feature works better.

Sorry. Maybe I'm not the target of your app though.

Oh, also, it didn't work for me using safari.

One more thing: The text you see after a file is deleted has a grammar mistake: "Your document succesfully deleted."

Thanks Frazzydee for all the feedback. All taken into consideration. And thanks for catching the grammatical error.

No problem..I actually felt really guilty after writing that for having nothing but negative things to say :(

Wish you all the best with it!

Well, now that you put it like that :).

Thank you. The first thing any front should do is to tell visitors what the site is about. Maybe I should be more detailed. Will do. Thanks again.

I'm pleased to have been helpful and, of course, wish you extravagant luck. One of my pet peeves about web sites in general, related to your state: every damn commercial site everywhere should have a darn "about" link so interested potentials can begin to puzzle out who they potentially dealing with.

First impressions:

1. Please use a mechanism for tracking all files I have uploaded (whether custom registration, openid whatever). Without that, this looks like it can be used only once unless you are capable of remembering those ids that appear in the URL (http://www.doxela.com/manage/777656602.php).

2. Provide the upload form at all times as that is the main purpose of your site. For e.g. If I did not enter a filename, the error appears on the front page and I cant find the upload form anymore

3. The URLs (for manage) seem to be having more slashes as I move through every page. Not a problem, but just ugly URLs if I have to share those.

4. There are much better uploaders available with progress indicators. Using a simple file upload control works, but would be much better to use a better upload control

Of all, I would only like (1) above as the absolute must.

Thank you for the feedback.

1. I may think of a way to do this using, or at least email users the links just as Craigslist used to.

2, 3.Agreed.

4. I will have to look into other uploaders.

Thanks again for the time.

Please tell me you haven't used the default wallpaper from OSX Tiger as your background :|

Sorry, I can't tell you that.

Sorry, but you absolutely need to change this. It's overt copyright infringement. You've provided zero attribution to the content creator, and don't own the rights to the work in the first place.

Ripping off someone's work - whether they're an independent designer or a multinational corporation - is not cool.

Anyway, I tried uploading a PDF to demo the service, but it didn't work; the file uploaded and it redirected me to /manage/[id].php, but the page never fully loaded. So, I'm really not sure what to say but I'm kinda bummed out by that.

It's cool that you've created something to share with us, and I really wish you luck in making it your own and getting it to work. Good luck, and feel free to share it later on!

Cscotta,

Thanks for feedback. I have to create more error messages.

Also I frankly did not think it was necessary to give a shout out to Apple. Nevertheless, the background will be gone as soon as I do a simple design.

Thanks again for trying the app and for sharing.

I think it would be copyright infringement regardless of whether or not you attribute the source.

True, you'd need permission from the rights holder to use the image.

Do a Google search for desktop wallpaper using the advanced CC options or use a background from KDE or such that is FOSS licensed, eg from http://kde-look.org/index.php?xsortmode=down&page=0&...

1. create an onclick for the share text-box so that it auto-selects the contents making right-click for copy easier. Don't bother with auto-copying the text. Many browsers don't support that function anyway.

2. the Manage link didn't work for me.

3. the delete button loads the doc viewer again with an error message that it's no longer available - You should only make it show the "this has been deleted" message, not the viewer.

4. Your app seems pretty pointless. You're better off directing people to docs.google.com and teaching them how to use it instead.

5. You'll probably run into a brick wall (disk limitations at Google) well before you reach any sort of critical mass. So, again, I don't see why you're doing this.

I just uploaded a pptx created with PowerPoint 2010 beta and all I got was "This document type is not supported".

You will definitely need to support pptx if you don't already, and make sure you work with Office 2010, otherwise you're losing a huge chunk of potential users.

Thank you city41. I am simply using the Google Doc Viewer embed feature, hence I can only support the document they support. But I will try and find a work around. Thanks again.

I have used Google Doc viewer (embedded version) in another project and it is far more limited than the Doc viewer that is part of GMail, which may result in hitting a brick wall development wise.

Edit: Are you using the proper embeded version or a hack of Google Docs - its prompting me to login from an iframe.. this is a definite! problem. Email me for advice neurofog <at> gmail <dot> com if you want the details.

Drop.io already exists. And it's way, way, way more robust than this.

clickable http://www.doxela.com

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