I have a client who designs dresses for dance studios... she wants an order form where customers will select details (color, fabric, style, etc..) from separate drop downs and that change will be reflected in a "sketch" of the final design... for this sketch, she has seperate images for each style, fabric, etc... that can overlay each other. So, when let say the customer selects a blue long dress with whatever fabric, the "sketch" will be changed to reflect it...

If that makes sense, what I am wondering is

1) Would it be better to do this using layers, flash, javascript or ???
2) Would png be the best format to overlay the images?
3) Does anyone know of anything similar to this?

Thanks for your replies

Sam

Flash would be best for 2 reasons: More portability and people like that kind of thing with the types of app you're suggesting.

PNG is a lossless format, if memory serves, so that's a fine format to use. GIF and JPEG are lossy, so avoid them.

Remember if you do PNG via layering or javascript, you'll need to apply a PNG patch for IE 6.

Use Flash. Your client will love it!

Thanks for the replies..

I suppose flash would be the most effective... one thing I have to consider is that most of my client's customers may be using older computers and may not have flash installed... Id like to find something to substitute in place of the flash.

Not all ballroom dancers are geriatrics Even on older computers it's likely that the flash plugin has been installed and if not, it's easy enough to do so.

I've seen a couple of sites that do something similar to what you want to do, but I'm pretty certain they were all done with flash.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Not all ballroom dancers are geriatrics

Haha.. I wasnt assuming that... thats what the clients told me. Prescott Valley is a retirement town... the large majority of business owners here are actually retirement age.. including the dance studio owners.

Thats not to say that some older folks don't have newer computers, but from what my client tells me, I need to plan for the majority of users to be on older computers.

I think I will go ahead with the flash.. maybe plan some nothing none-flash to go along with it.


Sam

the large majority of business owners here are actually retirement age.. including the dance studio owners.

I see.. something I didn't know at all

The alternative would be javascript or other scripting along with CSS that allows you to drag elements around the screen. Have you looked into jQuery ?

Ive never played with JQuery before... might be something to look into huh?

Originally Posted by thehuskybear

Haha.. I wasnt assuming that... thats what the clients told me. Prescott Valley is a retirement town... the large majority of business owners here are actually retirement age.. including the dance studio owners.

Thats not to say that some older folks don't have newer computers, but from what my client tells me, I need to plan for the majority of users to be on older computers.

I think I will go ahead with the flash.. maybe plan some nothing none-flash to go along with it.


Sam

thats great one,,