I came across the Olive Software's Active Magazine product, when trying to read the Red Herring magazine online.
As the user experience was so good and natural; Incredibly I flicked through all of the 88 pages of the Red Herring issue!
It worked in Firefox. And, it does not load any heavy duty plugins, just Java Script, though I did not care to look under its hood to figure out if it was using any Flash, the user experience was so good, that the content had grabbed my attention and my techie instinct took a back seat.
What I have noticed about me is that I start looking under the hood, only when; either the site get slow, or crashes...I guess that's when my engineering sole wakes up and takes over from the Net surfer.
The Active magazine is a great concept, though I guess it would be costing a bomb! Given that they don't disclose the prices upfront.
If you are running a community news letter, then best is to use Open Office which is free and open source it comes with a SDK. You can also generate PDF with a press of a button.
But, if you are running a professional e-zine setup, then go for Active Magazine!
