One of the things i missed to post during the holidays was about Issuu very impressive new feature called Smart Look. this new feature allows you post links to document files in your blog that can be opened in a Lightboxed/Overlay Digital Document Viewer. that is what Smart Look is. a way to generate a Document Reader that can be opened in your blog without your visitors having to go anywhere. but that is not really the most remarkable thing. what it is remarkable is that while you need to Open the Overlay first. you can also jump to full screen from it and have a even better view of the documents. This previous inability to view the Digital Document in full screen directly from a Blog post or Blog page was my main objection to issuu. with Smart Look they almost have removed any complains or wishes i could have.
Issuu made up a Example Site where you can try out the different Smart Look Viewer based on what Document File are they loading:
Magazine (PDF)
Presentation (Powerpoint)
Document (Word)
As anyone can see by the pictures alone. the Issuu Smart Look viewer and document viewer is fantastic. for the purpose of reading and viewing presentations. it is already excellent as it is. the documents and presentations can be easily viewed and read on a regular monitor or laptop screen at the lightbox size. but if more is needed viewing them at full screen should be more than enough. it also reaches a new high for ease of use since they can be launched by a user with a click.
The only thing that is still a little jumpy is the zoom eye view and the zoom and drag option in the Magazine mode. the magazine mode as a lightbox is not enough to be able to read the magazine but it is enough to scan trough the magazine. the full screen view of the magazine mode will be enough to read the magazine is you got a big monitor but it will still not be enough for a regular monitor or a regular laptop with 14 inches of screen and less. the full screen transition also gives something to desire because it is Flex and it consumes a lot of resources so it will be a bad experience for old computers and netbooks. this is why i always wonder if that would be the same if the viewer would had been done in Silverlight. my guess is no. but we still have to wait for Silverlight adoption to grow more for we to proof that one.
Now my only request to issuu is a middle point version of their regular issuu widgets and Smart Look. give us a Digital Document Object that can be embed and adjusted in size but that can be able to jump to full screen view directly from it too.
But even with that little hole still there in Issuu. it is now the best Digital Document experience you can get to have and it should serve as the point of progress to evolve from. if so. this will indeed be the year were Digital Documents and Digital Document Objects will find its heyday no matter the kind of content you want to display.
You can check more on it with this very quick demo video from Issuu
Issuu Smart Look (example site)
          
