Here's a cool product that allows you to convert printable files into Macromedia Flash documents or PDF files with one click.
One of my students, Joshua from Sallie Mae, told me about Adobe/Macromedia's Flash Paper 2 application. So the other day I downloaded it, did the install, and took it for a test spin.
The deal with Flash Paper 2 is you can instantly generate Flash documents or PDFs from within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These files can also be transformed into secure, compact PDFs for e-mailing, archiving, and printing.
It Only Takes a Couple of Clicks
I opened my resume in Word, and with a couple of clicks, had generated both a PDF and Flash file of the document. As an experiment, I dragged the newly-created Flash document file icon and dropped it on the document area of a Firefox browser window that happened to be open on my desktop. A Flash Paper 2 toolbar appeared embedded in the browser, along with a search box, printer icon, document scrollbar and more.
I could then search the Flash file for the keyword XML:
FlashPaper 2 found it, automatically scrolled to the place in the document where the word XML is located, and highlighted it.
The Flash document I created is Section 508–compliant and cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device compatible. In both my Flash and PDF resume files, the hyperlinks stayed active, the bookmarks stay booked, and all the text content was searchable and could be highlighted, selected and copied.
Secure PDFs
Most important, FlashPaper can generate PDF output that's secure. You can choose to protect your file with 128-bit encryption and two levels of password protection. This secures your documents from unauthorized viewing, editing, copying, and printing.
A single user license will set you back $79, but you can take the app for a test drive by downloading and installing the 30-day free trial of Flash Paper 2 at Adobe/Macromedia's site. It's cool.
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