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PSD Layers on Interactive Site
Okay – I’m on a limb here… I don’t know how to even think about doing this – I don’t know if it’s possible – I don’t know if I’m in the right forum – I’m not sure if it can be done at all… but of all places, I thought this would be my best shot.
I’m the head behind a Star Wars site (www.njoe.com ) and we recently polled our users of what feature they most wanted us to add to the site. I threw in a galaxy map option as a “joke” (not a ha-ha joke, but a filler in the poll options), and never expected it to win with a major landslide as what users most wanted to see. Which is great that there was a clear winner… not so great that now I have to get it produced.
We’ve assembled a team to create the map and determined our two best methods of output are either Flash or a giant image. I’m not too fond of the giant image idea because of size and the fact that it looses much of the interactivity that Flash would allow us to have. But we’ve all decided there’s little chance of getting someone onboard skilled enough in Flash.
I was wondering if it was possible then, to somehow use an applet or program or *something* to allow users to turn PSD Layers on and off. The best example of this would be the Macromedia FlashPaper that allows PDF files to open directly on the website itself. If it helps to explain better, what I’m picturing is that the basic map opens and then users can toggle on and off different overlays which might show trade routes, battle sites, planet affiliations in multiple eras, etc.
Is this remotely possible or has anyone ever heard of something similar? (Or if I’m thinking waaay too far outside the box, are there other suggestions for map format?)
Thanks
-Jeff Driscoll -
4 Replies
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hello…
well – here’s a 30 minute example that i envisioned while i was reading your description (i.e. on windows only, as it is just a quick mockup and ie is the fastest way to do this):
https://www.sitruc.com/cow/njoe.com/
if that’s what you had in mind, feel free to lift all that code for your own use. it would have to be modified to support firefox and safari. the drag part is the only thing that would have to be customzied per browser, and there’s a link at the top of the page to a cross-browser drag solution…
hope that helps! if you have any questions, then please of course ask… 🙂
sitruc
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That leads me to a great idea – thanks!
It wasn’t what I’d invisioned originally, but after talking with my Tech Diety, we’re actually going to be leaning toward something surprisingly similar to what you posted while we were talking. (Great minds, right?)
Thanks!
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hello…
cool. i might personally just make the more info a rollover div that you could update content for, move to the rollover location and show for that area – more user-friendly, but it would also mean that you’d be limited to a smaller area for that content…
but if that iframe was the size of the page itself, it could work nicely…
sitruc
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Well, what we ended up talking about was having clickable places on the map that opened a pop up window with the information in it. I think that’ll work just great.
We’re also going to have the JavaScript load various transparent overlays to accomplish my issue with layers. I think it’ll actually work… now I have to get the map made…
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