There arose a desire to present books in a fully digital format for the purpose of presenting it on the site. There were a number of choices of technologies to support this ability, such as Adobe PDF, Macromedia Flash, and simply HTML with images. The Macromedia FlashPaper technology was chosen due to its ability to present somewhat high-resolution images, in full color, with the least performance loss and quality loss. The format is relatively low in size, and is supported through the very common and easily-obtainable Macromedia Flash browser plug-in. FlashPaper is included with distributions of Macromedia Contribute, a content-management solution which is compatible with Macromedia Dreamweaver sites.

The process of converting a book into FlashPaper is a simple process performed on a PC which contains Microsoft Windows XP. It utilizes the special image printing features provided in Explorer on this version of Windows.

A digital book starts as an ordered group of digitally scanned images from the original book. The order of the files are defined by the file name (i.e. a number of 001, 002, etc. placed at the end of each file name). Then, the images are placed in an isolated folder. From this folder, the “Print Pictures” feature can be utilized in Explorer, which is found on the Taskbar (left side), under Picture Tasks. Using this built-in feature, all of the images are selected to be printed (and will print in file name order). The “FlashPaper Printer” is then chosen. The page size and orientation (landscape or portrait) must also be chosen based upon the book’s scanned image sizes. Usually this can be determined through image editing software such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. In most cases, the images were assumed to have a long-edge of 8.5 inches or 11 inches, based on if the book is tall or wide, respectively. The other dimension was chosen proportionally to keep the aspect ratio of the images. This concept will keep the image as flush as possible on the “printed” pages in the FlashPaper. Once the size is decided upon, the book is printed using the “Full Page Fax Print” setting, which fits the image with resizing rather than cropping. When the book is finally printed to FlashPaper, and the results are acceptable, it is saved in a Flash file (SWF) and can then be posted as any other Flash embedded object in an HTML page.

There is also an alternate method to producing a FlashPaper book that requires word-processing software. The procedure described below is intended for Microsoft Word, but can just as easily be recreated in any word processor. This useful if you do not have Microsoft Windows XP’s printing features built into Explorer. Also note that there is more flexibility and customization available in this method, as you can essentially format each and every page differently as opposed to the uniform page setup used by the built-in printing features from XP’s Explorer.

A blank document is created in Microsoft Word. The document is set to have a dark grey background (optional). Then, in page setup, the vertical alignment is centered, margins set zero on all sides, and the advanced option of printing background colors must also be enabled. The page size and orientation can be determined based on the original size of the scanned image (or proportionally larger or smaller, to keep the aspect ratio). Keep in mind that the page sizes and page setup options can be different on every page, if the need arises (i.e. different orientations on different pages). Add each page of the book consecutively, adding a page break after each image that is inserted (ctrl + enter, in Word). Note that in some cases, the page break may be unnecessary and the pages will break automatically. The images should be centered horizontally. Finally, the document can be printed as usual, but instead directed to the “FlashPaper Printer.”