PDFmenot.com vs Vuzit.com
Just testing pdfmenot.com - a tool from the people behind bugmenot.com, retailmenot.com and cushycms.com. It lets you read a PDF in your browser without downloading it, and even embed a pdf in another page with a bit of javascript. Also trying out an alternative, vuzit.com.
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I’m partial to the simplicity of pdfmenot - just add a prefix of “http://pdfmenot.com/view/” to a PDF to view it. And the embedding is a tiny bit of javascript. Vuzit on the other hand requires an API key to be embedded in the iframe. Vuzit does pick up the right zoom level automatically, which is a plus - and with a bit of work could be set up with my own logo/branding. PDFmenot seems to be one size fits all.
PDFmenot seems aimed more at the user - making PDF viewing simple for anyone who doesn’t want to download a PDF to view it. Vuzit seems more geared to the developer with a HUGE javascript API that can handle all sorts of fine control, making embedding documents very powerful. I’d use vuzit in a large CMS, pdfmenot for simple sites (like mine).
Tagged with embed • javascript • pdf • pdfmenot • tool • vuzit
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2008-06-18 at 5:44 pm
Josh, Thank you for the thoughtful write-up, we really appreciate it. pdfmenot appears to be throwing an error now, so Vuzit appears to stand the test of time.
However, I think they have built a fine product that is extremely easy to use. As you pointed out, we have focused heavily on developers first, and our user tools will be coming in the near future.
Please let us know if you have any additional questions about Vuzit, and we will be happy to help you. Best, -Chris
2008-06-18 at 7:15 pm
It does appear to be having some issues at the moment. I've changed the document they were both pointing too, as the other one was throwing errors (maybe it was sending the wrong meta info), and it seems to be working again. It's also got the same zoom issues it did before that Vuzit seems to have sorted.
I get the impression that the PDFmenot guys threw it together in a weekend and put it online, but have no real future plans for it (I could be wrong of course), whereas you Vuzit guys have a big model for your product. There are so many competitors in this market though, with Scribd.com being your biggest rival I'd imagine. they essentially provide the smae service, but I'd argue that iPaper is a huge deal, and puts them at an advantage over your viewer. Sorry, it seems like I'm picking on you guys a bit, but I'm curious about your plans to keep up with the big guns. Does Google entering this space (slowly but surely) worry you at all?
One way you could differentiate is the privacy concerns of these tools. I'm currently looking at implementing a PDF viewer into a school webpage, and the documents I wish to share shouldn't necessarily be promoted "socially" on a site like scribd. How could Vuzit help me keep my documents under my control on my own site, but more useful to my visitors (search, full page viewing, faster etc)?
Thank you for responding to my original post - it was a throwaway post I wrote very quickly and with my initial first impressions. I hope you don't regret me voicing my additional concerns.
2008-07-19 at 4:47 am
Ajax Document Viewer is a web based online document viewer and can embedded into any web page or linked from any page. It is fast, customizable and FREE.
Are you having problems displaying documents, pdf’s, images, word documents? Do your customers have to download a reader to view a file? Do you need a fast pdf reader? Do you need a universal viewer for any kind of documents?
All these problems go away by using Ajax Document Viewer.
For most companies, getting software products to market on time, on budget, and with the right features and functionality is always a challenge. But it doesn’t have to be.
2008-07-19 at 4:47 am
check out http://www.ajaxdocumentviewer.com
2008-07-19 at 9:06 am
It sliced and dices and does your taxes too. You know that it’s a bit rude to just copy and paste your front page sales pitch into comments. The whole idea of marketing yourself on blogs is to engage in conversation with customers, like Chris did (above).
And your name is a misnomer as well, it’s not Ajax, it’s flash, otherwise I could use it on my iPhone.
I can however see the vuzit document somehow, so they win!