How to create a flip book/page?

I need to create a flip book/page application. I have seen flash created flip page, can it be done in any other languages, e.g. jquery or javascript? And also, what are some concepts that I am required to have in mind/knowledge on for creating a flip book?

Thanks.

Solution

Not quite sure what you mean by "flip book", can you elaborate on this?

If you mean just a digital book, that you can turn the pages of, then I would surgest looking into this AS3 page-flip engine. And here is a list of good (mostly commercial) examples

EDIT* - Not to sure why you would want to create this from scratch, as there are a ton of well made Page-flip libraries out there that are really nicely build, and are either free, or really cheep. Most of the time they are customizable too.

That said, I think they are probably all using a combination of the following:

Preloaded pages - movieclip with either an image or other graphics preloaded into it
Gradients - to give the illusion of a 3d page that is "turning"
Trigonometry - for dragging effect. To angle the page towards mouse
Masks - to get the page folding effect, when the user start to drag the page, the next page is loaded over the top. Both these page have been masked off based on the users mouse position.

Also the Page-flip engine I linked to above (MegaZine), is open-source. So if you where really keen, then you could dive into there source code and take a look for yourself.

Hope that helps somewhat.