Looking for options to present print magazine in online web format

Discussion in 'Print Community General Printing Discussion' started by Jeff, Jan 15, 2009.

  1. Jeff

    Jeff Senior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2006
    Messages:
    702
    Location:
    Michigan
    I'm looking for some interesting options to present a current small-circulation (1200) print magazine in a user-friendly and attractive format online.

    I suppose the ideal might be to have a layout program that produced xml files automagically for a true xml / html counterpart so the print articles are formatted for print but the content is pulled off as xml and reformatted on the fly in a web-format. But I'm not there yet, worry about the duplicity of effort to reformat all ads for example for the new web format, and so am looking for a way to preserve the print layout but present it in an attractive / userfriendly / quick / inexpensive way on the web.

    Incoming format would be PDF. Simply presenting the pdfs on the web seems a bit dated though in that it feels like you're downloading something separate and it's not "right there" as the website. Plus there's the delay of the acrobat/adobe reader when used inline in the browser.

    Flashpaper looked to me like it might become something really interesting -- I liked the way it loaded better inline for me in the browser than reader does, but I don't think there has been any development on it in a year and I'm not sure there will be.

    I've looked at a couple flash flip-book alternatives which are kind of sleek and catchy, but so far they are using images for the pages which seems quite inefficient for the text content, and I haven't found one which works perfectly yet.

    Any interesting suggestions for taking a PDF of a magazine and presenting it in an interesting way on a website?
     
  2. Xirc

    Xirc Member

    Joined:
    May 2007
    Messages:
    29
    Check out Texterity Published Web Format: www.texterity.com
    Published Web Format (PWF) provides a flexible approach to presenting information.
    * Web-based page view - no plug-in required
    * Search within document, or across all documents in a collection
    * First page, next page, previous page, last page, go to page number navigation
    * View original size or multiple zoom factors (configurable)
    * Hierarchical table of contents viewable as left-side navigation or drop-down
    * High quality image and text page display
    * Single, two-page, and "full screen" page view
    * Print page or page range
     
  3. Jeff

    Jeff Senior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2006
    Messages:
    702
    Location:
    Michigan
    Thanks Xirc -- can't find any pricing information which makes me fear it's going to be expensive, but will put in a quote request ASAP. Like the zoomability, search index, etc.

    What do you think of this flash page flip demo in comparison:
    http://page-flip.com/new-demos/03-kitchen-gorenje-2008/index.html
    Interesting/interactive or a gimmick?
    (nice that you can buy this as a one time fee product vs. a per issue service, but the pdf publisher still isn't out yet so hard to say if it's even an option as I don't want to convert page by page, but it does catch my eye)
     
Loading...