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Reading White Papers In Flash??

By Michael Stelzner

White papers should be easy to read, right?

Well I recently found a white paper that was presented in a very unique way.

I was surfing some blogs and came across Easton Ellsworth’s blog. He referenced me to a white paper called, “A Corporate Guide to the Global Blogoshere.”

First, let me confess that I did NOT read any of this paper.

I got too caught up in the presentation.

When you click on that link above, you will be brought into a fancy interface.

I want to know what you think about this presentation of a white paper?

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 6:57 am and is filed under Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • My main complaint: I couldn't figure out how to highlight text as my eyes scanned the page; which is my preferred reading style.

    What the real benefit of creating such an interface like this?

  • Jeffrey

    I am a reader, not an author, and the use of this functionality has really grown in the last year. I have seen it used for three different types of documents; catalogs, online version of print magazines, and whitepapers.

    Also, I hate this stuff. The only way I complete reading anything presented in this format is if I can tell in the first paragraph or page that the entire thing wil be world-class in writing, presentation, and relevance.

    And it never is.

  • I'm not sure what I think.

    On one hand, it's cool...different.

    On the other hand, it's not intuative...it took several seconds to figure out what to do once the page loaded. That's likely a training issue that goes away after a couple uses. And the zoom views never quite looked right on my screen.

    I like PDF better. But that's what I'm used to.

    Jury's out. There is something there, but I'm not sold. This is one I'd rather follow than lead.

    Re: Doing math to post a comment...at least it's not subtraction.

  • It took me five seconds to get annoyed and leave. And I am a web designer who likes pretty things. If I wanted to be entertained, I would have learnt their funny monkey language, but I wanted info and I have lots of fantastic info around me so .. click.. left within 5 seconds

  • I've seen electronic retail catalogs and some travel brochures created with similar technology (using an Australian-developed application called Desktop Author, find it at http://www.desktopauthor.com/). It's kind of neat with SHORT documents (eight pages or less), but I find it tiring in longer documents. Despite the path technology is taking, the simple fact remains that humans aren't built for/wired for *comfortably* reading much online.

    I did start reading the content of the white paper. Such "flashy" presentations create expectations in my mind of what I'm going to find in the actual content and its writing style. Sadly, I found much of the writing (so far) to be stiff, stuffy, stilted. The contributions from France and Poland were quick and easy to read, but I've mostly felt like I've had to *plow* through the content.

    And I agree with Jonathan. 40 pages is too friggin' long.

  • Well we had to originally learn how to use pdf too... and learning to zoom wasn't that difficult.. there was a one page button..

    I thought it was kinda cool.. not sure about the merits of the paper.. I didn't read it either, but the technology was fun.

  • I think people are used to the interface of PDF (like the ability to search, etc.).

    This interface is distracting. I did not like the fact that it is not immediately readable. You need to figure out how to zoom in.

  • That's exactly what it is - a fancy presentation, nothing more.

    Other than the "fancy-schmancy" animated pages, PDF accomplishes a lot more.

    Anyway, a white paper that weighs in at 40 pages is too big. It needs a condensed version for the short attention span audience.

  • That's not only bad, it's horrendously terribly awful !

    Thanks for making my day ... no matter what I do, it will never be that bad !

  • Hi Michael,

    I used the math plugin to keep spam down. I stopped using it after a few weeks however, thinking that it's better to keep it simple. Do you use the Aksimet spam filter for WordPress? It's the most popular one. On it's own it get's rid of 99.9% of all spam on my site. Rarely do I need to moderate spam.

    Regarding your question above, at first glance upon clicking the link I didn't know where to look. It wasn't obvious enough and there's more than one button saying 'click here'. After I saw the back and forward bar at the top, and the click to zoom it was easy. I'd read it, but didn't like the jumpy turning of pages. If it's not smooth don't bother.

    Besides, it's not even necessary.

  • Hey Will - I know, writers and math... This is the only way to keep the bots off my site. - Mike

  • I'm not sure it adds anything over PDF, and it certainly seems to detract on readability. I do like its ability to present full spreads, but then I'm not sure a full spread translates well to on-screen reading.

    Also, making me do math to comment? I'm a writer, man! :)

  • At least they give you the option of printing it out.

    I'm not sure I'm ready to communicate in a "3-D" world.

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