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Stunning, Free Web App Converts PDF To Flash Flippable Book
Take a look at the screen shot below. It's an extract from a web page, showing an e-book that I was browsing. As you can see from the curly corner, you can turn pages simply by clicking. And when you do, the smooth, full-page animation looks really superb. It's all done with Flash.
Now here's the clever part. If you want to make an e-book that works just like this, you can. For free. Just take any PDF file that's no larger than 10 MB, upload it to http://www.codebox.es/pdf-to-flash-page-flip, and the site will do the rest. In just a few seconds, your converted file will be ready to download, in the form of a zipped collection of html and flash files. You can browse them locally on your computer, using a standard web browser, or upload the results to your web site if you want to give your visitors the full experience.
There's a handful of commercial products that can convert PDF files to Flash-based flippable books, but they cost upwards of $100. This one looks very impressive, as far as I'm concerned, and is totally free to use.
Gizmo's Comment
I tried this out on the free 44 page pdf report called " Great Freeware Programs That Should be on Every PC" that we are currently offering.
I converted the PDF by uploading it to the website http://www.codebox.es/pdf-to-flash-page-flip and then downloaded a zip file containing the converted report in Flash format along with a number of other support files. The PDF upload was 0.76 MB while the converted ZIP was1.2MB and the unpacked archive 1.7MB.
The end result was excellent. The two page wide layout works well, web links converted perfectly and the page turning worked smoothly. Some people have reported that it runs very slow but I must say that when viewed in Firefox 3.6 on my two year old laptop it ran fine. You can see for yourself by downloading the converted fille from here:
http://download.techsupportalert.com/9-great-freebies.zip (1.21MB)
Unpack the enclosed folder to a convenient location and then double click the file index.html to open it in your browser. You will of course need the Adobe Flash plug-in installed in your browser.
Overall I was impressed. The only negative was the difficulty I experienced locating the upload link on the website!
Gizmo
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Comments
Try this one http://www.axmag.com, online conversion is free.
This might sound really silly but once you have converted the pdf to a zip file, do you have to (as you seem to have done above) upload the ZIP file to your site and give people instructions on how to open and view the file? I was hoping to be able to just provide a link to the book/brochure itself...
Kirsty
I tried the CodeBox web site mentioned and it failed to convert every PDF I uploaded except one, even with simple PDF's.
When I finally figured out the zip file and corrected the problems with my software the result was great. Works for me - XP Pro 2002 SP3; dual-core 2.5ghz 3.24gb ram.
Works great for me --- quite responsive - - - speed the same as if I was turning the page on a book myself.
Would be this of any help?
http://www.martview.com/
I downloaded MartView and it wouldn't install because my main drive is "E" and it only installs on a "C" drive - kept telling me that the installation was invalid.
This hasn't happened to me since the early days of DOS, around 1982 time frame - there is seemingly no option to install it manually - it is a complete black box, and I can't seem to find any support or support forum.
Not worth my time or effort.
I had a look at this. It is a quite impressive PDF reader (among other thing) that offers page flipping without the need for conversion along with various other PDF reading modes such as a film strip view.
On a fast PC with a good graphics card it could be an outstanding freebie but on many PCs its slowness to display the PDF pages will be too annoying.
Gizmo
I tried it on more than one computer but found it slow and a bit hesitant when turning pages.
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