Visit A-PDF to FlashBook web site
One of our client’s recently asked us to convert a PDF brochure to a ‘page flipping book’ that could be viewed from his web site.
Having seen a couple of free applications that would create this type of book for us, albeit lacking in a couple of simple features we wanted, we were disappointed to find that the majority of this software costs over £100 – that’s a lot to pay for an application we’re only going to use once (Adobe Reader is really all you need these days, but it doesn’t have the fancy page flipping the client was after).
We stumbled across the A-PDF to FlashBook application and were surprised to see that it was only $39 (about £25 here in the UK). All the usual questions went through our mind – especially given the price of the competition.
Was it any good? Was it limited? etc. So we downloaded the demonstration trial version and gave it a go.
Upon opening the application our first thoughts were that the user interface looked busy, however this was a misconception. Remember, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover!
Actually, using it was very easy. There’s four buttons across the top of the application window – click over the first, appropriately labelled ‘Import PDF’, select your PDF file from the dialog box that opens, choose the output quality (a balance of quality against file size) and click over the ‘Import Now’ button and that’s it.
The graphical representation of what the resulting FlashBook will look like when viewed by the user is accurate and functional. However, rather than building a double-sided book that flipped over the pages, it had produced, what could only be described as, a stack of single-sided sheets that shuffled the sheets from a pile on the right of the screen to a pile on the left when the ‘next page’ link was clicked. Definitely not what we were expecting.
A quick re-import confirmed that we hadn’t missed a setting on the import dialog box. Hmm, maybe this is why the software was so cheap, it didn’t actually build a ‘page flipping’ book. Then we read the application’s web page again…
“…convert PDF documents to flash eBook with 3D page sliding effect…”
OK, that was our fault – always read the blurb properly first. However, we went on and created our FlashBook. The process was equally as simple as importing our PDF file, click over the large ‘Convert to FlashBook’ button at the top of the application window, give the app some details of where to save the file and what to call it and we were done.
In addition to saving the FlashBook for use on a web site (view sample), as we did, we also liked the ability to burn the resulting FlashBook to a CD or create an executable program file so that the brochure could be easily distributed to clients via email or on exhibitions as a CD – now we know what those gimmicky CD business cards are for.
We think that, for the price, this is a very easy to use application that will enable small businesses to quickly create electronic books and brochures that would otherwise be out of their reach, price-wise, and would recommend it to them.
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