FerroGate » Finally an online PDF viewer that runs WITHOUT Flash

Finally an online PDF viewer that runs WITHOUT Flash

August 4th, 2008 by Martin

I’m pleased to share a great piece of news from the Issuu laboratories. It’s something that should thrill Flash-haters and PDF lovers alike: The world’s first online publication viewer that runs completely without Flash. Well, at least I think it’s the world’s first, as I’ve just tried running Zinio, Zmags, Scribd and the rest of them, without Flash – and no cigar.

For all of you non-geeks out there, this may sound a bit on the dull side. But for anyone trying to get a message across to parts of the world where Flash is a not an option, or maybe you just don’t want to be dependent on Flash, the new Ajax-based Issuu viewer should be great news. If you have Flash installed, the viewer will show the SWF version (vector graphics) of the publication, and then substitute that with a bitmap version if you have no Flash installed at all.

As you can see from the picture above (if you can release yourself from the very intentionally chosen cover babe from Fast Times Magazine), it looks pretty similar to most desktop based online viewers: No fancy effects or moving objects; just plain old text and images. It has all the basic features you’d expect, such as zoom and searching the text. It’s perfect for presenting papers, research, manuals and so on. And, as a really neat bonus, it also runs on iPhone and iTouch.

All you need to do to get the non-Flash viewer, is upload to Issuu, open your publication and change View mode to ‘Paper’.

Here’s another example, with the hilarious How to Start Smoking.

Update: Digital Inspiration has now blogged about this too.

Via