mindgraffiti

After re-reading part 1 I realized I left out the sale book development timeline and examples:

• The first generation started with the searchable catalogs.
• The second generation was the Flash Paper pages.
• The third generation began with the plan to create Flash animated pages.

As you can tell by the dates, the first two were still being implemented until quite recently.

Each of the generations had their quirks in production and functionality. [Mostly the pattern included sacrificing functionality in the name of production speed and better visuals.]

The searchable catalogs took 2-3 days to build and post, rarely offered photos, came packaged with dull graphics, and did not visually represent the as-printed version of the sale books, but had the best features when a user was looking for specific stats and search criteria.

The Flash Paper pages took less time to build, cutting days down to hours, and gave the added bonus of actually seeing the graphics and photos that were in the printed catalogs. However, it gave up the high functionality of the searchables: can only search text, cannot search for specific stats on animals, and took much longer to load. In return the Flash Paper pages were easy to print, easy to zoom in and out of graphics and text, and quickly skipped to any page in the catalog by using the links header.

The Flash animated catalogs took minutes to build, offered high quality presentation and was shown truly “as printed.” No more font issues, no long hours to build a sale book then upload it, and acceptable loading speeds for our 56k users were reached. Unfortunately it also meant no more search features and no more print-friendly versions.

While our customers enjoyed the new look and feel of the Flash animated catalogs, we continued to search for a way to bring back some of the functionality of the older methods. With version 2 we hit the sweet spot - that fine line between functionality and presentation. We created a hybrid of the “as printed” catalog above the fold and reinstated the searchable catalog below it. Not to mention we hit our technological limits as well - our average user has Flash Player 6 and there was very little non-deprecated server-side code available for the searchable catalogs.

Related Posts:

• Case Study: Sale Books, part 1
• Flash Resources
• The Heated Debate Continues…
• Taking a Crack at Flash Components: the DateChooser Component
• Taking a Crack at Flash Components II: DateField Components