C anadian jewellery seller Toribellas was looking for an online catalogue that would reach a yet untapped audience for her products. After selling through parties, get togethers and various other social functions, the owner had decided that an online voice was required for her products. When we approached the site, we looked at other online retailers and came up with an approach from a creative standpoint which was both upscale, yet friendly and approachable. Meeting with the client and discussing the project at great length meant that ultimately, we were satisfying their vision of what they wanted their online site to say about their business. It is important in those intial stages to really understand what is the approach of the creative.
"We therefore turned to a flash/flex model with a MY SQL backend ..."As with any good design approach, the two color model was followed. The most important prescence we emphasized to the client was that the products had to be the focus of any interface approach we would use. By choosing very clean, neutral shades for objects and smooth, feminine lines for the fonts, we were on our way there. So, we were careful with choosing the right type.
Turing this creative concept into something meaningful from a technical execution perspective into an online application, meant we had to pick a platform that was extremely modular and maitainable. We therefore turned to a flash/flex model with a MY SQL backend to maintain the huge number of photos that would be required in the design. It was then that we received a significant challenge from a client delivery perspective. We received the photos and then realized that there was a good deal of design editing required to make the content conform into the look and feel of the site. The photos had not been shot in a lightbox and instead had a forced lighting perspective which make it uniquely challenging to edit. If the design approach had not been modular, we would have had serious issues with the final execution of the project.
"Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications..."The next most formidable challenge would be to face the coding opportunities that arise when working within a flash/flex 2 infrastructure. A good deal of the code would have to be externalized. That mean creating folders where the files would reside and having relative references to them within the code structures themselves. Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. While Flex applications can be built using only the free open source framework, developers can use Adobe® Flex® BuilderT software to dramatically accelerate development. Let's get one thing out of the way - Flex 2 is not a replacement for Flash. Flash 9 will hopefully arrive some time near christmas and a preview was released on Labs today. Flex was the first to to leverage the possibilties of the new Flash Player 9 but if you download the AS3 extension from Labs you can code AS3 in Flash 8 today. Flex is a tool for building applications. It has no Timeline, no Library, no drawing tools. It is primarily a tool to create applications based on a set of easy extendable components that connects to data services on the web. It may be used by designers to lay out the forms in an application, but it is created with Programmers in mind. Flex 2 marks a significant change. It is the first program from Adobe/Macromedia that is made just for Programmers. The two former versions (Flex 1 and 1.5) were never targeting a broad audience and required that the SWF be generated on a server. Both these versions were based around a specialized version of Dreamweaver that was slightly sluggish and you (more or less) had to use it together with Flash. The learning curve was steep and so were the prices. This caused a very limited uptake and there were next to none that knew how to program it. Fast forward to 2006. Flex 2 is priced a fraction of the former price, but it is more advanced and approachable. Adobe aims for a million developers in a short timeframe, the Builder tool is based on Open Source software and the strategy is to offer the basic SDK for free. Quite a change!