14 DAY TRIAL // Books will always be part of our lives and have been for a very long time now. They come in different forms and types and keep up with the technology and modern time. Books used to be written on various materials in ancient times and with the Chinese paper, the evolution of books took a huge step forward and gave the opportunity of further progress. The printer was another colossal step in its evolution as it could be duplicated faster and with way less effort.
The age of computers had to include books in its project and create the proper environment for changing their appearance. Nowadays, a single electronic copy of a book can travel all over the world in less than a minute and in a quarter of an hour, millions of users could get their hands on it at the same time. There are too many tools that can help you create a book and Adobe provides a series of such professional instruments that need no introduction or presentation.
But these tools are designed for printing. For electronic use, you can choose a different tool, like NeoBook, an instrument designed for creating electronic books only. The developer makes available the software for a price of $199.95. The 30 days trial period will allow users to properly test the application without any restrictions to its functions and options.
The interface is intuitive enough for you to find your way through the options, although professional help is needed. That can be found in the comprehensive Help menu which covers every aspect of the application and provides you with the necessary tutorials to get you started.
All the boxes and windows of the application can be displaced at the users' wish. The only bar that is glued to the interface is the menu bar beneath the title bar. The books created with this program can be of three types: standard application (a .exe file), screensaver (.scr), system tray application (.exe) and web browser plugin. This aspect should be kept in mind when starting the work in order to reach the optimum results. Saving the book as one of these three types is handled at the finish, when you get to compile it into one of them.
The publications that can be created with NeoBook can be electronic books, interactive tests, CD interfaces, screen savers, custom utilities, product demos, training materials, multimedia projects, sales brochures, catalogs, multimedia resumes, kiosk displays, slideshows, etc. Colors and illustrations as well as hypertext links or button controls, animation, audio and video can be easily inserted into the electronic material.
Working with the application is pretty easy after you get a hint on its functions and possibilities. However, if you want to create a novel of over 100 pages, you will find that it is difficult to handle the file. There is no limit to the number of pages you can add and numbering them will be done automatically, all you need to do is type in the title of the page.
A Master page is available in here as well as in other similar softwares. It will help you customize all the other regular pages in your electronic material. Thus, drawing a "next page" button on the Master page, it will appear on all the other pages of the publication diminishing your effort and saving your time. The buttons can be customized in terms of color and size very easy due to the Style Palette available in the right hand part of the application window.
A great feature that I enjoyed is the Actions tool. It helps you to apply different actions to the objects inserted. The user can add navigation actions that allow the reader to easily go from one page to another or to skip to different chapters, or manage the run of a slideshow. Messages/Interaction options let you apply actions to the objects so that they display alert boxes, balloons, sticky notes, menus, search functions, etc.
The General properties of the page can customize all the pages in the book in an unique manner and load pictures from the computer as background, configure them to the back so that the text is visible. The user can set transition effects for each page. There are 22 choices which include effects like Dissolve, Wipe Up/Down/Left/Right, Slide Up/Down/Left/Right, Explode, Implode, Weave and Split both horizontally and vertically, etc. A preview window is available for viewing the transition and a slider allows you to set the speed of the effect. Unfortunately, I did not notice a significant difference between level 1 of fast and level 10 of slow.
Also, the text does not necessarily have to be written in the built-in text editor as the user can load it from a Rich Text File (.rtf) or from a Plain Text one (.txt) and add it to the publication. Both the text and the background of the text window can be configured to have different colors so that the contrast does not become tiresome for the eyes too soon.
Objects can be placed anywhere in the window and one over the other. The Tools bar gives you the possibility of inserting all the multimedia items, while in the properties of the objects, the user can add the desired action.
A mouse camera will stick to the mouse movements inside the work area and zoom it up. This way, you can optimally place the items and objects inside the window. The Object List will display all the added objects and give you fast access to Object Properties window, bring it to the front or send it to the back, as well as hide or show them.
Pressing F6 will display the book properties window where the editor can make the finishing touches and add the title as it appears in the application's title bar, the name of the author, set the hyperlink color, set the icon for the book, select the publication type and size, set a password for starting the publication, the keyboard control, etc.
The Good
Professional application for professional publications. It can be well handled and I enjoyed playing around with it. The Help menu is truly fantastic and gives all the information for getting you started with the work. The broad range of options allows the user to practically add every supplementary material in the publication. Using the actions will result in a very flexible electronic publication with which the readers can easily interact.
The Bad
A modern look would make a better first impression.
The Truth
The truth is that you can do the electronic material you want with NeoBook. From multimedia CDs, presentations and even entire books to screensavers.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
