Sponsored Feature: Flipping Book

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Chris Coyier on (Updated on )

Flash can do some amazing stuff. Stuff that can leave even the handiest CSS and Javascript developer drooling with envy. We then sulk back to our caves because, alas, Flash is not the development path we have chosen. This is a foreign world who’s amazing feats are out-of-grasp lest we start learning a whole new development environment from scratch.

One of those drool-inducing Flash feats is Flipping Book. This is an amazing Flash object which mimics the behavior of a book laying on a table. You can literally grab the corner of a page and flip the page with some absolutely kick ass animation.

pagefilp

But wait! The amazingness of Flipping Book is not out our grasp at all! In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Flipping Book was specifically designed to be as easy to implement and customize as possible. You can know nothing whatsoever about Flash (or even have Flash on your computer), and use Flipping Book. You can buy the SWF object alone and control it completely through an XML file (!).

Before you read any more of this, I really encourage you to go check out the demos. That is the best way to get a hands-on feel for how it works.

Flipping Book comes in two varieties, the Flash Component and the Flash Object. As I mentioned above, the object is the quick plug-and-play option. Even though it is easy, it is still powerful and fully controllable through variables and XML. The Flash Component is a standard extension for Adobe Flash MX, MX2004, Flash 8 and Flash CS3. This means you simply install it and it will become a component available to you in the components panel in Flash. This is even more powerful, since your pages will not be limited to JPG’s and SWF’s, but can be absolutely anything you can put in a Flash document.

Either option costs only £25 (about $50) for a single site. You can also buy 10-packs and unlimited use licenses for huge discounts.

Straight from the source, there is a new version coming out very soon. This will be a free upgrade to any existing buyers. New features will include a “hardcover” option with the ability to give pages rigidity and thickness. Native support for “widepages” (spreads), new preloader options, new shadow options and more.

Sounds pretty sweet to me. I could see this being a very cool way to present a demonstration, a portfolio, or quite literally, a book.

Visit the Page Flip website