We all know that there are just some things that can’t be comfortably done in front of the screen, one of them being able to read entire books. As an approach to tackle this problem, Adobe, in October 2006, unveiled Digital Editions, a beta web application aimed at creating a more user-friendly experience with digital reading material. And it’s expected to be available in full form sometime early this year.
To help fill you in with a brief summary (or refresh your memory), Digital Editions is a light weight Rich Internet Application for downloading, managing and, most importantly, reading digital publications, such as newspapers, magazines and books, on-screen. Sound like Adobe Reader? It does, except it isn’t.
The complex enterprise uses for the Reader make it inadequate for long periods of viewing and/or reading. The Digital Editions, on the other hand, is designed for performance and on-screen readability outside the browser, giving the user a Flash-based user-experience.
This easy-on-the-eyes user-experience is more enhanced because it further develops the eBook capabilities in earlier versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat and incorporates support for Flash. And with support for an “XHTML-based reflow-centric publication format designed to represent dynamic content??? as well, you can ultimately adapt and adjust your digital publications to different reading displays more smoothly.
Giving It A Brief Look
One word came to mind as I fiddled around with the application a bit: simplicity. Navigation buttons in this RIA are discreet and the task bar is hidden, “hovering??? when you interact with the document. The black sleek interface actually minimizes the distraction around the document you’re reading. Of course, it includes page viewing options, a library for all your downloaded ebooks, and a text search function for the page that you’re viewing. Adobe also has an eBook sample library up with a mixed handful of novels, software guidebooks and literary classics for you to try out.
You can see it for yourself if you haven’t already. The 2.5 MB download is available from the site and you can get more tech information from the Labs page as well. If you’re looking for an easy digital read, Digital Editions is another thing to look out for in 2007.
