FlipViewer

Since advertising, catalogs and magazines have migrated to the Internet, multiple methods of exploring them have been developed. Electronic books can be found in various formats that can either be stored on hard drives or accessed only online. FlipViewer is the kind of application that enables you to view ebooks that are found on the Internet.

When the application launches you are greeted by an interface that slightly resembles a web browser, with an address field available to input path, as well as a few other functions available in the upper toolbar. There is nothing to pose accommodation problems, with all features clearly visible and an included help manual to get you out of sticky situations.

Using the application you can access nearly any web page, with no restrictions to content whatsoever. Video and audio content is streamed flawlessly, with the only aspect that sets it apart from a common web browser being that content is displayed in an animated, interactive electronic book format. However, for a proper experience it's best used with OPF or OPZ files, which you can also load from your computer.

You can work with basic navigation options, zoom in or out on pages, as well as enable an auto-flip or slideshow mode. In case you need to quickly switch between pages you can set up bookmarks for one-click access.

One of the biggest disappointments is that you cannot save books to your hard disk drive for use in offline mode, even though the application lets you view content already stored on your computer. However, you have the possibility to directly print content on a sheet of paper.

All things considered, FlipViewer is a neat way of accessing electronic publications over the Internet. Freedom to navigate to any desired web pages makes it practical for documentation purposes found in all sorts of content. Even though it's not the best of its kind, in comes in handy given the proper circumstances.