Scribd Inc

Scribd is the largest social publishing and reading site in the world. A big part of their success is based on getting people to upload content. The Upload experience is basic - a Flash based File Chooser dialog where selecting more than 1 doc requires using "shift clicks".

The company postulated that having a better uploader would increase the number of upload documents. More documents means more traffic.

Active X Uploader

I was tasked with creating such an uploader in the form of an ActiveX control. This was a Windows/IE only solution (60% of overall traffic). If it proved fruitful then perhaps a Java version would be explored to broaden coverage.

Desktop Uploader

All along while working on the ActiveX control I was structuring the code to also work as a standalone Windows application. Part of the reason was for testability. All the code was structured for testabilty and I could replace various pieces with mock implementations or shims. Much of the application is covered by solid unit/scenario tests.

While waiting for the ActiveX Control A/B testing to generate results (we ran various tests for a month+) I was asked to develop a real standalone uploader. This uploader was to have much more functionality, allowing users to set metadata on their documents before uploading.