I thought it is a good idea to "reanimate" this blog and to use it for sales tips also. And... this is the commercial site of MegaZine3!

Based on a real world request I played a bit with the numbers (Euros) and want to share the results with you. No secrets, but nevertheless helpful to understand our license model better.

Here the request (neutralized). First the original German wording, followed by my translation:

Wir möchten online-Kataloge erstellen, deren Seitenumfang zwischen 100 und 600 Seiten pro Katalog schwankt. Die Anzahl der Kataloge pro halbjähriger Saison bewegt sich dabei zwischen 40 und 60. Wir benötigen eine Lizenz, die zeitlich wie bezogen auf den Umfang unbeschränkt ist, da wir auch eine Art Katalogarchiv planen.

We'd like to create online catalogues, with page counts ranging from 100 to 600 pages.We have about 40...60 bi-annual catalogues. We also have to keep old issues in our online archive.

And here our answer (again, first in German and then in English)r:
Hier unsere Antwort:

Ich löse die Anforderung exemplarisch mit jedem der verfügbaren Lizenzmodelle:

1. MZ3-FIX: 1 Buch, unbeschränkte Seiten, Einmalzahlung, keine Folgekosten (weder für Archivierung noch für Updates/Upgrades), Online und Offline (CD) ohne Einschränkungen.
   Bei 50 Katalogen pro Jahr ergeben sich nach unserem Standardmodell 50*50 Euro abzüglich 50% Mengenrabatt (ab 10 Lizenzen) = 1.250 Euro pro Jahr bei gleichbleibender Anzahl Kataloge und Seiten pro Jahr. 
2. MZ3-FLEX: beliebig viele Katalog, bis zu 500 Seiten Online und 50.000 Seiten Offline; mit einer Toleranz von 50% bei der ersten Lizenz, Einmalzahlung, keine Folgekosten (weder für Archivierung noch für Updates/Upgrades).
   Bei durchschnittlich 250 Seiten wären 50/2=25 Lizenzen notwendig. Kosten: 25*100 Euro - wiederum 50% = 1.250 Euro pro Jahr, wenn der "Verbrauch" konstant bleibt. 
3. MZ3-TIME: 5 unabhängige Titel mit einer beliebigen Anzahl Auflagen und Seiten pro Titel, jährliche Zahlung um neue Ausgaben zu erstellen, keine Offline Titel, d.h. kein Download als Buch und keine Datenträger.
   50 halbjährliche Kataloge entsprächen demnach 25 Titeln mit 2 Auflagen pro Jahr. Da eine Lizenz 5 Titel abdeckt, würden 25/5 = 5 MZ3-TIME Lizenzen zu 5*100 = 500 Euro den Bedarf abdecken.
   Es müssen nur neue Lizenzen gekauft werden, wenn neue Kataloge veröffentlicht werden sollen.
   Es fallen keine Archivierungskosten an, d.h. alle einmal publizierten Kataloge dürfen Online bleiben, auch wenn keine neuen Kataloge mehr veröffentlicht werden und daher keine neuen Lizenzen benötigt werden.
   Kein Risiko, einfach zu kalkulieren und zu planen.
   Falls doch einzelne Kataloge als DVD Version verteilt werden sollen, könnten diese jederzeit gezielt durch MZ3-FIX oder MZ3-FLEX abgedeckt werden. 
4. MZ3-HOST-M: bis zu 250 Kataloge pro Jahr, unbeschränkte Anzahl Seiten, jährliche Zahlung um neue Ausgaben zu erstellen, keine Offline Titel, d.h. kein Download als Buch und keine Datenträger.
   Kosten: 400 Euro pro Jahr Die Aussagen zur Archivierung und einer Offline Nutzung sind identisch zur MZ3-TIME 
5. MZ3-PUBL-M: bis zu 100 Kataloge pro Jahr, unbeschränkte Anzahl Seiten, jährliche Zahlung um neue Ausgaben zu erstellen, Online UND auch Offline Titel möglich. Downloads als Buch oder auf Datenträger sind ohne Einschränkung erlaubt.

Bei der Anzahl an Katalogen passen entsprechen die Anforderungen sehr genau denen eines "Kleinverlegers".

Meine Empfehlung: Eine  MZ3-PUBL-M.
Diese deckt den aktuellen Bedarf voll ab, hat sogar noch gute Reserven und keinerlei Einschränkungen was Seitenzahl, Archivierung oder Offline-Nutzung betrifft. Und mit 400 Euro pro Jahr ergibt sich auch ein sehr fairer und interessanter Preis!

ENGLISH

Here a sample calculation for all our available licenses. This hopefully helps to understand each license' logic:

1. MZ3-FIX: 1 Book, unlimited pages, one-time cost, archive and update/upgrades are free. Online and Offline (on media like CD) without restricitions but the limitation to one book only (unlimited copies and pages). 
2. Assuming 50 catalogues per year  our standard model ends up with costs of 50*50 Euro minus 50% discount (valid for >= 10 licenses) = 1.250 Euro per year if the number of catalogues and the page count do not change too much.  
3. MZ3-FLEX: unlimited number of catalogues, but only up to 500 online at a time, or 50.000 copies on media.
   The first license comes with a tolerance of 50% to ease checking of license requirements,
   One-time fee, no future costs for archiving or updates/upgrades.
   Assuming 250 pages on average per catalogue, about 50/2=25 licenses are needed.
   Costs for this would be: 25*100 Euro - 50% discount (more than 10 licenses) = 1.250 Euroevery year. 
4. MZ3-TIME: 5 independent titles, unlimited number of issues and pages per year. No archiving costs, new licenses only needed to be allowed to continue publishing new issues.
   No copies on media or downloads
   50 bi-annual catalogues would represent 25 Titeln and 2 issues per year. Since one license covers 5 titles, a total of
   25/5 = 5 MZ3-TIME licenses is needed at costs of 5*100 = 500 Euro per year.
   No risk, easy to forecast.
   In case of requests for offline copies, a dedicated MZ3-FIX or MZ3-Flex could be purchased.
5. MZ3-HOST-M: up to 250 catalogues per year, unlimited number of pages, new licenses have to be purchased every year as long as new catalogues are published.
   Costs: 400 Europer year
6. MZ3-PUBL-M: up to 100 catalogues per year, unlimited number of pages per catalogue.
   Annual payment to publish new or modify existing catalogues. No archiving costs.
   Advantage compared with the MZ3-HOST: Online AND Offline catalogues are covered. And since the number of catalogues is significantly lower than the needs, there is good "margin" for growths without additional costs.

With that number of catalogues of > 50 it is kind of a "mini publisher" business case. So at the end it is no surprise that the MZ3-PUBL is the best fit  -  and my recommendation.

With 400 Euro annual cost this is a bargain ;-)

The new pdf2mz3 program asks you some easy questions... and does all the rest.
Starting form a pdf file you create your book witin a minute; ready to run on your local PC or for upload to your server.

A complete expandable directory structure with all needed folders and files is created.
No worries baout how to name your images, your mz3  or index files.

Support for search is prepared and will be the topic of the next tutorial

If you ever had problems getting your books to start - here's the way to go
Tutorial (EN) PDF to MZ3 Conversion with pdf2mz3
Tutorial (DE) Umsetzung von PDF Files in MZ3 Bücher mit pdf2mz3

You also can download the complete package (~10MB)  including the MegaZine3 software
or the pdf2mz3 tools without MegaZine3 Binaries (~20 kB)

How to use all those parameters available to get optimal results?
(you can download this long text as PDF file ;-)

I created 2 little zoom demo books you can look at:
demo book with zoomdoubleclick and
demo book with liquid scaling and gallery

Showing the same image with text in different resolutions.
The MZ3 File and the images can be downloaded for own tests. But attention: it has about 36 MB!
Just the 2 MZ3 Files are available without the images also (much smaller ;-).

Background "theory":
There are dozens of parameters you can use to adjust the final book to your needs.
Although we hopefully did a good job in setting useful default values, in many cases you can and should achieve better results in changing some of the default settings.
You can find all those parameters you can tweak at book, page and element level in the wiki; like:
Book Attributes (56!)
Page Attributes (9)
IMG Attributes (6)

Use the key words on the left of the wiki, the links on the main page of the wiki and the search function to find areas of interest.

Here some ideas and tipps on what knobs you have to optimize your books with jpg images. Not a complete list, more a teaser to encourage you to get deeper into the features and functions and options you have with MegaZine3!

At the end you have to find the best working set of parameters and configuration yourselves, dependent on your data, your design and your customer expectations.

First (because this question came up several times):
The gallery still works the same with v2.x as it did with v1.x. And it is still available. But if you're used to v1.x you should read the information about migration in the wiki, since some names of parameters changed!

In gallery mode (full screen) it is not possible to operate the book in the standard way because of FLASH security restrictions. In neither version. For example it is not allowed to enter data like page number or search strings.

But... with the latest version 2.0.6 you can set a parameter called zoomstep, Which defines how much you change the zoomscale with one click of the zoom button (or lock of the mouse wheel).
Using that new parameter together with reasonable settings for zoomminscale, zoommaxscale and zoominit you can optimize the quality of the presented JPG images of your book.
Together with the scale attribute you can switch/reload different resolution JPGs, which will support in having always the optimal quality.

So something like:
<book plugins="console print ... ..." 
zoomstep="2.0" 
zoomminscale="1.0" zoommaxscale="4.0"
zoominit="1.0"
pageheight="600" pagewidth="400" ... ... >
..
..
<page>
<img widh="400" height="600"><src>path/to/lowres.jpg</src>
<src scale="2.0">path/to/highres.jpg</src>
</img>
</page>
<spreadpage buffer="true">
<img widh="400" height="600"><src>path/to/image01-1x.jpg</src>
<src scale="2.0">path/to/image01-2x.jpg</src>
<src scale="3.0">path/to/image01-3x.jpg</src>
<src scale="4.0">path/to/image01-4x.jpg</src>
</img>
</spreadpage>

will do the following:
The book will open with zoomscale="1.0", i.e. the size of the defined page with a low resolution image that perfectly fits. As long as the image and book sizes match; i.e. the image is 400x600 pixels for above example).
This is achieved by zoominit="1", which opens the book with the page size defined by pagewidth and pageheight.
The optimal sized low resolution image (here placed in a "low res" folder)  is loaded, because scale is lower than the lowest defined scale (which is scale="2.0").
With this we achieve a 1:1 mapping of the image and monitor pixels: -> no scaling, high quality, fast

Zooming in to the next zoom level by button or mouse will lock at scale="2.0" because of zoomstep="1.0".
The (next) higher resolution image will be loaded. That should be 2 times the width and height (4 times bigger). In our case the original high resolution image should be downscaled (with e.g. Photoshop) to a size of 800*1200 pixels. Then again 1 image pixel fits one pixel of the monitor.

Same with scale="3.0" at the double size page (spreadpage), where we defined that.
And finally with the highest defined zoom level which is scale="4.0"; again with a best fit resolution image of the size 1600*3200.

If you had very high resolution photos (like from a 12 Mpix camera), you even could add the gallery with the original image assigned by HIRES.

Additionally to these basic "zoom tunings" there are other parameters you could play with to increase quality at not even fractions of 2, like "aa" for anti-aliasing.

If you prefer and like liquid scaling you have to find an optimum between smooth adjustment to the browser window size and quality.

BTW, the book parameter zoomdoubleclick="true" might be of interest if you do not have active (clickable) areas on your page. WIth that you can toggle between liquid scaling and full screen...

And: there is a full screen button in the nav bar that opens the book in full screen; like in gallery.
But with the same restrictions regarding entering of key strokes, though.
Advantage compared to gallery mode: There is no need for an extra definition of a HIRES path for the gallery ;-)

Just play a bit with all those options and you'll get a feeling on what might best work for you.

For those who read to the very end... some explanations to the demo book:

The first book has zoomdoubleclick enabled.
zoomdoubleclick
If you set zoomdoubleclick="false" (or delete it), the gallery for the first image works and you can see the image in full resolution when clicking on the spy glass. With zoomdoubleclick enabled you have the advantage that you can quickly and easily change between a locked zoom scale and the liquid scaling mode (i.e. the mode, where the book changes size with the browser window).
But double click or any other click will no longer work! And with that: no gallery!

The second book has zoomdoubleclick disabled and becasue of that the gallery is working
gallery and liquid scaling

Quick lesson on Liquid Scaling:
Starting in a browser or after refresh the book is in liquid scaling mode, i.e. the size varies with the browser window. Zoom the browser window and you will realize.
Then click the zoom button (or into the book to give Flash the focus and the mouse wheel works; and zoom with the mouse wheel). From that time on liquid scaling is disabled.
To reenable it, you either match the size of the book that it perfectly matches the broser window (with some experience you will realize it "snaps in"), or you refresh the browser or you make the brwoser window smaller than the lowest zoom level and then try to zoom down again. After that liquid scaling will work again.

Go to the last pages; those with the image spread across both pages. There the gallery now is enabled and you can click while the cursor shows the spy glass to open full screen with full resolution.
The last double page then shows a SWF page (look closely at the vector text!), the double page before shows a big JPG file.
That enourmous reolution only is possible in gallery mode, since this works without Flash. Flash has it's limits, maximum size of an image bust be smaller than 2880 pixel on either side!

You can switch images also in changing the language from German to Englsih and vice versa.

There are different combinations of images on the pages; i.e. different resolutions.
So you can closely wathc the effect of different zoom scales and resolutions; and what works and what not.

Then go to the last page and slowly turn the mouse wheel and zoom in and out.
You will see that at certain scale levels the laod bar pops up and a new image is loaded.
At levels 4, 9 and 12 different images are reloaded.

Do an analysis of the MZ3 files you can download to see what parameters are used; and how!


Enjoy!