Designtion has made two improvements to the Cell PDF Reader service. First, there were some reported iPhone xhtml incompatibilities that have been resolved. Second, recognizing that mobile devices all have memory, screen, and internet connection differences, you can now customize the size of the PDF pages for optimization for your phone. 1x (~1k per page) is the default and should be compatible with all devices. However, you can choose up to 5x now (~5k per page) to display more content at a time for higher-powered devices. (5x looks better on the iphone in landscape view!) You can change this via the dropdown in your user home screen. The pages read / maximum pages ratio of each document will change accordingly.

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Designtion is proud to announce our new Cell PDF Reader^TM, which allows you to convert the text of any PDF on the web to your cell phone. This service stores the text on our site, splits the text into pages, saves the page number you’re on, allows you to password protect your PDFs and manage and delete them, and gives you a convenient index of your PDFs for quick access later.

You can search for PDFs on the web in two steps. Simply use the search page to choose a PDF to convert, and then confirm the title of the PDF. Cell PDF Reader is free and does not require registration (though registration is optional). Since it is part of Designtion Mobile, it should be compatible with any web-enabled wireless device (including iPhones).

1) First you need to get to our site. The easiest thing is to go to designtion.com on your phone and click on the Cell PDF Reader link. Here are some tips on how to do that.

2) Here is the Cell PDF Reader home page. If you have the address of a PDF you’d like to convert, enter it here — otherwise click on Search for a PDF to convert.

3) Enter in any search term you want - there are millions of PDFs on the web. Here we entered in ‘hacky sack’ and got 1,380 results.

4) Scroll through your results and click the Convert link for the PDF you want to convert.

5) The address and title of the PDF should populate the main form. If you prefer, rename the file to something more meaningful to you. When you’re ready, click Convert to Text.

6) Your PDF is converted successfully! The system assigns you a user ID here so you can log in later. You also have the option of entering an email address and password, or just reading the PDF you converted. Click Read PDF.

7) Now you’re reading the text of the PDF. Note that all the text in the PDF, including image footers, sidebars, and diagram text is converted, so text chunks may appear out of order, but the main text is there.

8) The page navigation (links to Previous / Next pages) is at the bottom of each page, as well as First and Last page links, links back to Designtion, and a link to your User Home. Click through a couple pages and then click on User Home.

9) This is your User Home, which lists the PDFs you’ve converted, what page number you’re on, and a link to delete each one. You can convert new PDFs and search for new ones from here. This page is meant to be bookmarked, but let’s password protect it first so that other people can’t read / delete your PDFs. Click Password Protect this page.

10) Here you can set a Code (password) that protects your page. For easy access, this code is included in plain text in the URL of your home page, so don’t choose a code that you use as a password anywhere else. You can enter your email address, which enables you to log in with your email and code instead of your user ID and code. Providing your email address will also allow us to send you occasional updates about new cool services from Designtion. Once you’ve entered your info and hit Submit, you will be given a permanent link to your User Home including your code [and email] in the URL. Click on this link.

11) Here is an example of a password protected User Home. From here you can access any of your PDFs or convert new ones. This is definitely the page you should bookmark!

Note: if a new PDF conversion request times out, try going back to your bookmarked User Home, and chances are your new PDF will be converted anyway and listed there.

This is a brand-new service and Designtion appreciates your feedback. Please tell us what you think!

Edit: You can now customize the page size of the PDFs shown on your phone.

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Designtion is proud to announce our newest service, Designtion Mobile, making designtion available for mobile devices. Designtion now uses the WURFL repository as implemented by WALL 4 PHP, meaning that our home page will now detect over 22,000 devices and serve wml or xhtml data that’s compatible with your phone. To visit designtion mobile, simply go to designtion.com on your cell phone.

Most cell phones enable you to enter an address in manually. Try clicking on ‘web’ or ‘t-zones’ and clicking on your menu. From there you should be able to ‘enter address’. If your cellphone is not detected automatically, you can enter in the address http://designtion.com/?cell=true instead. Designtion recommends Opera Mini, a Java browser that you can download onto your phone that generally works better than the native browser on most phones. You can go to operamini.com on your cellphone to download it. Designtion Mobile is compatible with opera mini - if you want to see it in action in emulation on your computer, go to http://www.operamini.com/demo/, hit menu, enter address, and type in designtion.com.

Designtion currently offers two cell services - Designtion Trip Planner, which gives you on-the-go access to Chicago’s public transportation trip planner, and Designtion Cell PDF, a new service that allows you to convert PDFs to text you can read on your cell phone. The phone number link from our cell site also allows you to call us from your phone with a click of a button. Please give these new services a shot and tell us what you think!

Posted in wap, xhtml, wurfl, wml, opera mini, Projects, mobile, PHP by Designtion | 1 Comment »