Hi Folks I am a brand new Activ-E user and would appreciate any comments or help you may have. I have scanned the forum but did not find (or maybe do not know enough to understand) the answers. Here's my situation. I had written a manual (in MS Word) for a course I teach. I also had a pdf version of the file made with Adobe Acrobat. Up till now I have been printing copies and snail mailing them to clients (duh). I have made it into an ebook using Dreamweaver by cutting and pasting into a template I designed. I did not use the MS Word save as html for obvious reasons. The compiling, password generation, and paypal set up went smoothly without any nasty problems. Activ-E prooved to be relatively easy to use - at least for the straight forward stuff I was doing. Here are my questions. 1. One of my clients downloaded the manual to his office computer but also wants to have it on his laptop. I'm comfortable with this but don't know how to give him another password protected copy without him having to go through PayPal again. Suggestions? 2. This same client wants a printed copy. I could email him the PDF version with a password but wondered if there is a more elegant (perhaps automatic) way of achieving this. I have a few manuals which I would like to convert to an electronic delivery format but to be usefull as reference material during classes they need to be in a book style format. Any comments or suggestions would really be appreciated. Thanks
There are different solutions and the best solution really depends on the number of clients that need to install it on a second machine. The easiest solution is for them to email to you the Keycode for the second machine. Then it a simple matter of looking up the corresponding Registration code on the password list.
If this is something that you want automated, then you'll need to work from an online database.
As for providing a printable copy. Why not recompile the ebook with the print option enabled. If you change nothing else the ebook should open without the client having to re-input anything because it uses the identical Key/Registration combinations.
Thanks Storyman. As usual every answer begets more questions 1. Is the keycode and the password number the same thing? There will only be a small number of people in this category so you suggestion will be ok. 2. Perhaps I did not expalin the printing situation well. The printing option is already enabled. The printed output looks like a web page. I have a navigation bar down one side. The client wants something that looks like the pdf version. As I mentioed in my original post I could send him the password protected pdf file but would like to use an automated solution if one is available. Thanks for all you help.
When you create the password list it is possible to save it as a text file. In the text file there are two columns: Keycodes and the corresponding Registration codes.
The Key code selection is based on the hard drive. What you are selling is the corresponding Registration code.
As for printing the easiest solution is to provide a PDF file, but that may not be the optimal solution. The solution I'd suggest is to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). One CSS stylesheet for the computer screen and another for printing. Which stylesheet is used is automatic--hence why I consider this the optimal solution.
The problem with PDFs is that it makes the security of your ebook pointless.
Thanks Storyman. I'm not familair with using CSS. I will dig out the books and see what is involved. Once again many many thanks for your rapid responses and help.
The good news is that since you are writing code only for IE working with CSS is a lot easier. The difficulty with CSS is to make designs cross browser friendly. If you were to use CSS for web design, I'd suggest writing CSS code for FireFox, then use the hacks to make work correctly in IE--the other way around is a nightmare.
I use Dreamweaver 4 for all my web stuff. What little I know about html has been discovered while tweaking some of the automatic - sometimes unexpected - things Dreamweaver does I looked at the manual lat night and for all the sense it made it could have been written in swahili. If it had been I might have been better off, my wife speaks swahili I'd like to got back to one of your earlier answers if I may. The keycode for the second machine. What precise instructions do I need to give the client so that they can find the keycode? Thanks again
When the user clicks on the key icon on the menu bar it should mention that what you need is the Registration code for Key code number ***
X. It is this number that corresponds with the Registration number.
You can check out how this works by creating a one page demo ebook book, compile it, the attempt to register it (of course you should create a new password list for this to work).
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