FlashPaper will be available as a separate product for $79! This time I’m purchasing it, cannot procrastinate this any more

FlashPaper started as Flash Printer at Blue*Pacific Software. It didn’t have an interface and was Windows only. Later eHelp acquired the product, and then eHelp was acquired by Macromedia. Macromedia added a nice navigational interface to it and bundled with Contribute. It was still Windows only. Flash Paper Viewer (the interface) 1.01 was included with Contribute 2.01.

I’ve been playing with the preview release of FlashPaper2 available for the last hour. It seems ready to release to me. Lots of enhancements. Search, PDF export with password, open in new browser button are my favorite new features. Very easy to use by simply dragging and dropping a document or using the context menu. Though I haven’t tried, also there’s now a Mac version (Comprehensive document navigation only available in Windows version).

The SWF interface has 49K footprint. The PDF files (v1.4) exported with security requires Acrobat Reader 5 or later.

Pricing is very reasonable. Now the only thing missing is the ability to change the Macromedia Logo. But it’s probably again reasonable not to expect this for this price.

I think Macromedia, once again, did the very right thing. Embracing PDF is a great move. In my experience PDF does not work online, it works for emailing, archiving, downloading and offline printing where also Flash Paper can work but PDF clearly has the lead. FlashPaper, while supporting PDF (with security) emphasizes this real world fact. Being not buried in Contribute (Contribute 3 still includes FlashPaper 2), FlashPaper can now get the attention it deserves.

I think we’ll begin see more FlashPaper documents online…

August 17, 2004 Update: FlashPaper 2 API now available (via Last ActionScript Hero).