Hello everyone,<p>I would very much appreciate your always thoughtful feedback on my web app:<p>http://www.pdfamigo.com<p>Please use the invite code "hackernews" (sans quotes.)<p>This is the very first public release of the app and I am sure there a lot of things to be improved and fixed. Frankly, I am feeling quite nervous submitting this for public scrutiny. At the same time I believe it's at a stage where user feedback is crucial both for fixing bugs and determining where to go from here.<p>I have tried to test the app with FF3.0/3.5, IE 7 and Safari 3/4. If you are using other browsers I'd love to hear about your experience. Honestly, I am not very optimistic about IE6.<p>Eventually, this is something I'd like to charge for. What are your thoughts on that? Would you pay a few bucks per form? Do you think a subscription model would work better? I am all ears.<p>Many thanks in advance.
Don't start users with a blank sheet of paper. Give them some indication as to what to do next -- for example, starting them off with an in-progress document or giving explicit "Click this, click this, click this" direction on the sidebar.<p>If you're worried about screwing up their work flow you can use heuristics to figure if they're still newbies and, if so, give them the prompting. (My online app figures you're a newbie until you save your first document, and continues prompting appropriately. Five lines of Rails code plus the template, doubles the percentage of users who successfully save a card.)<p>Can you figure out a way to do live preview prior to hitting the Apply button? I know, having done it, that it is NO FUN whatsoever to code, but it is a HUGE win in terms of usability. Users are spoiled by years of using MS Word which gives instant visual feedback for every action -- you should try to be more like Word.<p>You might consider a drag&drop metaphor for putting elements on the page. At present you click a button and they get thrown into the top left corner, which might cause them to cover an element already there and will always require repositioning. This is friction, consider eliminating it.
The UI is super slick. In that regard, I would say I like it better than something like Adobe's form Designer.<p>I would suggest trying to add more objects, like tables and such to make it easier for people to make the form they want. Maybe something like an option to make custom objects made of other objects? Also, being able to fill the form from existing data is useful too. If someone wants a form that dynamically grow depending on how much input there is, I'm not sure how PDFAmigo handles that, if at all. For instance something like an order form, where a user would want to be able to order 1 thing or 100 different things (which could mean multiple pages, etc...)<p>With all that said, this is a really nice polished product, and the interface you have so far is a pleasure to use, great job!
I'm wondering: what's your target audience? That would influence my suggestions. But generally I'd strongly second the "don't start with blank page."<p>Would a few examples of a range of possible end products possible (even just screen shots) help noobs envision the usefulness of it. [sorry if that's getting you into marketing issues (?prematurely?).]<p>Maybe noobs could even be shown an editable example (eventually: <i>several</i> examples to choose from - templates essentially) to play around with: i.e., a "sandbox".<p>Nice work!
I whipped up a quick sample and tried to save the PDF, but it came out corrupted (Preview refused to open it). Here's the document I made: <a href="http://www.pdfamigo.com/edit?document_id=aghwZGZhbWlnb3IOCxIIRG9jdW1lbnQYSww" rel="nofollow">http://www.pdfamigo.com/edit?document_id=aghwZGZhbWlnb3IOCxI...</a><p>In case it's useful to you, here's the PDF that it generated: <a href="http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2779/pdfamigo.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2779/pdfamigo.pdf</a>
If you're going to have a <i>show gridlines</i> option (Good Thing), you should probably have a <i>snap to grid</i> option for the form elements, so people don't have to stare at the screen and jiggle their mouse to make it all line up.
I think there is a usecase/market where you offer an HTML-Interface to the form and save/send the results as pdf.
Imagine a job-application form at a big company where the applicants can fill the form online but the HR guys get mailed a pdf (which they are used to).
Maybe its out of scope for this site, but if you have the technology you may start another one.
Simple and intuitive. The UI is fast. Not much more to ask.<p>You should submit it to <a href="http://AppUseful.com" rel="nofollow">http://AppUseful.com</a>