Page-flip - online magazine reader

You see it all over: A really neat virtual book or magazine where you can simply click & drag to page through. It’s one of the best pieces of interaction on the web, mainly because it effectively re-creates a real-world experience – no plugins or experience needed.

We’ve recently implemented page-flip for a magazine publisher. Visitors to the site are using it regularly and it’s really quick and easy for our client to upload new issues to it. In addition, these “virtual reads” get counted towards the magazine’s circulation figures, making it a very good investment.

Setting it up

Set-up is really simple:

• You buy the page-flip software and install it on your computer.
• We set up the integration with your website, which means you can add virtual magazines and booklets to pages on the site through the Content Management System (CMS).
• You prepare PDFs of the issues or pages that you want, and upload them.

It really is as simple as that, which means it’s a cost and time-effective way of adding a really cool interactive element to your website.

Issues & Solutions

Users on a dial-up connection, a 3G connection that’s running slowly, or an overloaded ADSL or Wireless connection may have problems loading a page-flip. Users with old, slow computers may also have issues with the animations not running smoothly.

These issues are fairly simple to handle:

• Offer simple PDF downloads as an alternative.
• Know your market: If your market is mainly users in corporate environments, they will probably have decent computers with decent connections to the internet, so they’ll get great usability benefits out of a page-flip magazine or book.

Overall the whole page flip system marries cool animation with great usability, which means it saves your clients time and leaves them impressed by the experience.

Contact us to see how we can implement page-flip into your site.

View a page-flip magazine on the Crown Publications website