Sorry Tony but, in a nutshell it's all down to getting DRM protection working rather than having an open pdf format where people could share it amongst themselves and not pay their £13 subscription, we're worried this might cause a negative effect - losing members would mean an increase in LDWA subs. TGO are a commercial operation not run by volunteers and so have more resources available to them than I do. So, the decision was collectively made by the ISC to trial this format.

Simon,

Not making eStrider platform independent seems VERY odd in this day and age. I subscribe to TGO for example and I can open this on any platform. Indeed they would lose custom if they made viewing platform dependent. I suspect most online journals/magazines are similarly platform independent. So why not Strider? Maybe I'm missing something here but why can't you just export Strider as a PDF and make it available for download to members subscribing to eStrider? - just like TGO. Why does it have to be so complicated?

Tony

Noel,

I don't understand your comment about about .pdf files. I regularly access such files on my iPad. I've never seen it as an issue. PDFs I sometimes open in iBook to make them readily accessible. Maybe I'm missing something here?

Tony

There is an issue with Apple IOS devices and Adobe software. For whatever reason, Adobe software is not supported on Apple mobile devices - hence .pdf files cannot be accessed on iPads, iPhones etc.

No idea why my post went blank. Anyway I had initially written:
I can only see and download the 3 first pages on my Android tablet (on which I have installed the Flash APK) and only with Firefox, since Chrome doesn't support Flash.

Errmmm. all I asked for is for the magazine to be available as PDF (it's obviously available as PDF somehwhere if you're creating the Flash version from PDF). Shouldn't be too hard to make the PDF available as well for download. Flash is not exactly the most "accessible" technology, PDF isn't much better either, but at least it's slightly better.

Hi Allan,

Thanks for your feedback regarding eStrider.

Currently eStrider is only available on PCs and Laptops with an Internet connection.

It is created by a programme called 'PDF to Flash Magazine' which creates a Flash Magazine, which uses... you've guessed it Flash and unfortunately won't work on an iPad, due to fact that Flash isn't supported on this platform. You may remember the recent controversy around this. The company who make the software we use to make eStrider claim that Flash Magazine should work on an Android Tablet, however I own a Samsung Tab 2 and it runs very slowly on this device. So I don’t think we’re quite there yet with this technology.

We chose this product to create eStrider as it only costs $99 and we wanted to see how the eStrider concept would be accepted by the LDWA membership before we invested larger sums of money into this project. I’ve taken onboard your feedback. All I can say is watch this space and hopefully in time eStrider will be available on portable devices and will complement the paper version.

Simon.

I've started a new thread as I don't want to add to the existing one as this is a specifi question about the electronic version

1. Please can it be downloadable (I couldn't find any way of downloading it): I'd like to read (& store) it offline.

2. Please can it be available as PDF (as well): I'm not keep on Flash.

Allan