Advice please

[bigginge]

OK, I know this is a bit technical but I don't know where else, or who else, to ask. I've got the chance of doing a site for a local picture framer and he wants it to be interactive along the lines of this site. How would I go about this, the different size frames and colours, and uploading a pic into it? Any advice very gratefully received.

[jAQUAN]

Not sure what you skill level is but it's a fairly large undertaking. There are probably freely available tools for building each piece of the process but combining multiple libraries usually turns into a tangled mess.

Your frame library has to be cut into corners and sides. The sides have to be tile-able and limited to what the framer can produce. Flash is likely the easiest way to preview the product and handle uploads but html should really be used to navigate back and forth, show options and place orders.

Sessions should also be carefully manages to page refreshes don't lose all their progress.

Feel free to ask more specific questions.

[FlashLackey]

You are being asked to design and build it yourself? Or, do you manage a team of people?

[bigginge]

Thanks for the replies.

FL, it's just me but he only wants me to design the 'engine' as he calls it, he'll put the actual site together.

J, are you saying the frames would be put together from sections, size to be determined by the input values? My skill level isn't that high, I've always managed to do sites that are simple but effective, I guess.

[jAQUAN]

Right, each frame would have like 8 source images. One fore each corner and one for each side. The side chunks would then be repeated/tiled to fill the space between corners. You may even have to create more than one version of each side if they are of a design that doesn't tile well.

Of course, if the client only offers some preset sizes, a single image of each size will work.

A site like that is all engine with a shopping cart wrapper. It's quite an undertaking if you'll be handling the framing, matting and uploading logic. I wouldn't touch it for less than 10 - 15k.

[FlashLackey]

FL, it's just me but he only wants me to design the 'engine' as he calls it, he'll put the actual site together.

An application like this is most typically put together by a team of people: Project Manager, User Experience, Creative Director, Developer, Copywriter.

There are people that cover more than one of those roles and you can always try and skip steps to make something less expensive. But, in this case, it appears to me that the application will need more than a single, medium-skilled dev for it to be competitive with the app in the link.

As jAQUAN says, there is a lot to that application that has to be figured out.