Flash magazines are still the best option for creating digital publications from print versions. The reasons are simple. Flash platform is stable, there is a huge development community constantly churning out components and continuously improving the usability and the already-phenomenal functionality of a flash magazine. Flash has over 95% penetration across the major browsers; you don’t need any new hardware such as a Kindle to view the digital versions, and finally the enormous flexibility to incorporate video, ecommerce, IAB compliant ads and countless other flash-based components. The last hurdle for flash magazines or flash-based digital editions with Page Turning Software to become the de facto standard is for Adobe to achieve high levels of penetration with its mobile friendly version of Flash. For starters, just the major devices such as the
Flash magazines of flash-based digital editions have some intrinsic advantages from a user perspective as well. The quality of graphics and realistic animation, which have become the standard in rich media ads, do a fantastic job of maintaining the look and feel of a print magazine. Moreover, the flash magazine often caches the immediate next or previous pages which means that the user does not have to wait for the next page to load when they turn forward or backward. Just think of a flash magazine as a perfect blend of all things good in a print magazine i.e., quality, graphics, and web based content i.e., web based access, cross linking for usability, and social media functionality.
The world of media and information will instantly become richer and a lot more exciting as soon as Kindle and other hardware incorporate Flash Magazines into delivery capability.
