This is cool and I don't mean to disparage the work that went into it, but at the same time I hope nobody actually uses it because just plain old vertical scrolling web pages are way more practically usable.
Like when your client demands it and you give in?
I've used pageflip in the past and grew to abhor it. It's only quality is the cool factor, which we got over 6 years ago. I hate magazines that use it for their "digital" version.
I wonder what is the "user" perspective on this. I am not sure everyone hates it - since it feels familiar in terms of structure.
This isn't necessarily true. For instance, if A and B are each measurable characteristics of potential solutions and your goal values A and B equally, if all other characteristics of solutions X and Y are equal, but X={A:2, B:7, ...} and Y={A:7, B:2, ...}, then X and Y are equally "good" solutions according to your goal.
Someone in this thread gave a great example: their company makes "photobooks" and this effect is used in the preview before you order to make it feel more "real". I think that's a legitimate use.
Obviously, magazines that just plaster pieces of the PDF on and then demand the page flip are not usable or accessible, but there are other uses for something like this.
My comment was related to the (common) case where someone thinks this is the best way to adapt printed content to the web, and that people actually want virtual magazines instead of something suited to screen reading/interaction. Fortunately that appears to be a dying mindset.
I find the same with virtually all animations on phones and other UIs. If it can show me what I want a smidgen quicker by not animating then it gets disabled.
because of course your users say they like the flashy effects, but you should never listen to your users when they say things like that. that's the sort of thinking that leads to sounds when buttons are pressed.
You can easily, to the detriment of results, create an environment where people say they like something when really they like the impact the the thing had on them the first time ("oh, cool") when really they don't prefer it at all but the record only reflects their initial impression.
With such a common use of them, we can start looking at how to optimize the catalog format itself, rather than stick with the scrolling vs. catalog format discussion.
Case in point: touchscreens replacing dials and switches in cars -- cool right? So flexible! But no, in reality they suck and you can't use them at all without becoming a danger to yourself and everyone else on the road. Physical dials and switches are way better because they can be controlled without actually looking at them. But this is something that takes a while to become obvious to people (in fact, car makers are still fucking this up).