And So Begins Production

After many long weeks of extra hours, tiny deadlines, and a stress level unknown to me, I can happily say the hard part is over. The Jane Goodall lecture went out without a hitch and we have received nothing but praise for it. Now that that is out of the way, I can now refocus to the task at hand. Now that my research phase is (long) over, production on my website must begin. But before I get into that, I came across this wonderful video:

It mixes two of my absolute favorite things- Star Wars and Saul Bass. It contrasts Star Wars' "lived-in" science fiction aestetic, with the sleek energetic style of the 50's and 60's movie titles. I could wax poetic about Star Wars and Saul Bass forever, but I'll skip that for now.

On to production! I have a (very) rough idea of how I want my page to layout, and some idea of the visual look of the site. First, the functionality. There are two directions I can go with this. The first is a site that is essentially one big image that the user can can click and drag their way through. I saw this once a while ago from one of the design blogs I frequent, and I fell in love with it.

I've done some research on various sites, and I've even picked up some code from (and I really, really hate to say this) the Thomas Kinkade website:

< type="text/javascript">

var server = 'http://www.thomaskinkade.com/newzoom';

var fif ='moumem';
var credit = 'Copyright © www.thomaskinkade.com';
var zoomtype = 'le';
iip = new IIP( "targetframe", server, fif, credit, zoomtype );



<>
< id="targetframe" style="border: none; width: 730px; height: 450px; background: #000000">
< id="morenavwin" style="border: none; background-color: white; display: block;">
< id="myScrollerMoo" class="scrollerMoo">
< border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
< id="scrollRow">
<>

< valign="middle" align="left">

< id="vloading" src="/htmlroot/zoom/images/loading.gif">
< /div>
<>

< /tr>
< /table>
< /div>
< /div>

Here is what it looks like.

So this is really what I want for the site, the problem I have is that I know next to nothing about javascript. The good thing is, I know people who know javascript, and I'm a fast learner.

If I can't get the click and drag to scroll functionality just right, then my plan B is to simply have a side scrolling site.

As far as how I'd like my site to look, I have a few ideas:

**Warning! Nerdy content to follow!!**

LCARS is the computer system used in Star Trek. I always liked how it looked, and for my menu system and some elements of the image I might make it look similar to the LCARS style.

My next inspiration is from the film adaptation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The animations for the guide are great.

So there are two things that I'll be working on developing in the very near future. I'll be posting more frequently about my production progress as well. Stay Tuned!