Tools for website presentation

Just recently I have been working on a number of web sites where seemingly impossible tasks have had to be achieved in very little time.  User's expectations of web sites are currently advancing at a staggering rate.  People now expect sites to do all sorts of amazing things which technically require a lot of time and skill to facilitate.

Here is a simple example.

Imagine a brochure website.  There is a product page that naturally shows a picture of a product.  Up till recently, some text and the picture of the product would be enough to satisfy most Clients and Users; but not any more.  We now expect to be able to click on the image for a larger view to pop up, with alternate views waiting in the wings. We expect all this to happen slickly in any browser, and it would be even better if the images could be updated at will by the Client and resized automatically?

Yes, this happens all the time on the web.  A few years ago, this sort of functionality was only possible for sites with many dedicated programmers.  Over time, the methods have leaked to the public domain and become honed and tuned... Now almost every site has something like this going on, and if it doesn't then it no longer holds the User's attention.  This is quite right in my book... it's called progress! 

Advanced functionality like this is now seamlessly integrated in all the major web sites.  The technology has become invisible and the expectations of the User experience are now much higher than ever before.

The difficulty

As a result of this 'raising of the bar', the job of making a site that meets expectations now involves a much greater array of skills than ever before, and expertise in more areas.  It has also resulted in 'specialisations' appearing, i.e. SEO specialists, Client side specialists, Server site specialists, Flash programmers, Ajax, Web services.. etc etc.

Delivering a Solution

I have experience writing use cases for web site deliverables.  My analysis produced sometimes hugely detailed levels of interaction specification for seemingly simple sites.  When the solution was costed out for an in house team of programmers, the cost was usually astronomic.  The fact is that producing customised interactivity to the standard that is now expected is always going to be extremely expensive.

Ginzola was to some extent a reaction to this trend.  If you can't afford to produce a customised solution, then it is far better to adapt existing solutions to meet your needs. This approach is not for all, but in terms of value in the end product there is no comparison. Off the shelf gives better 'bang for buck'.  Custom is often painfully slow, expensive and actually more unpredictable.

Has someone done this before?

Chances are... YES!  Taking advantage of off the shelf solutions requires a slightly different mindset on the part of the designer; a much more open mind to new ideas and approaches and flexibility to be able to integrate them by changing how things are done.  The rewards however are amazing and can result in extremely competitive results.

The original intention of this blog entry was to introduce some of the recent 'gems' that I have used in web projects:

SPAW

Spaw is nothing short of a miracle.  It is a full WYSIWYG editor for PHP and ASP.  For editing content on a site, it is relatively easy to implement and offers Clients superb control of content.  Unlimited licensing is 100 Euros.

Lightbox

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

Lightbox is ever popular as a Client side beautiful way of producing images.  I recently combined lightbox with some custom rollover javascript to enable a user to flick between a stack of images, and get the close up in the lovely lightbox. See http://www.orbitsound.co.uk/shop/

Mono Slideshow

http://www.monoslideshow.com/