Is this a Flash product

August 21, 2008 8:08 AM

Can anyone tell me if Erwin Olafs photography site (arty nsfw) uses commercially available Flash gallery products, or if it most likely a one off?

As far as I can see the main functionality is that the photos can be scrolled through in small (several per page) and medium sizes, one per page, medium size images can be printed or saved, and zoomed to very large size where you can move around the image with the mouse.
It would be helpful to know if parts of this are add on Flash components or 3rd party products, and of course what these are.

posted by zingzangzung to computers & internet (4 comments total)

The site loads a bunch of xml configuration files, I googled some of the element & attribute names like "is_landscape" and "photoitem_id" and came up with nothing. This strongly points to a custom job, but not does confirm it.
posted by neustile at 8:31 AM on August 21, 2008

It's unlikely anyone but the developer would be able to answer this definitively, but based on my own experience of Flash development, I'd probably just adapt some of my own existing code to build something like this. I almost never use ready-made components because they tend to either come with design-baggage from the component's developer, or they just don't do quite what I need them to.

Someone's going to come along now and say 'oh, it's product X'...
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 8:35 AM on August 21, 2008

A NSFW warning would have been nice.
posted by qvtqht at 10:54 AM on August 21, 2008

My guess is, based on the huge popularity and fame of Olaf (his fine art stuff goes for quite a bit of money, and he's worked for some really large commercial clients as well in the past few years), that you're looking at a custom built site. Also a hint: the fact that I don't know of any photographer's site that works as well or has these features.

As well, some of the features - particularly the save feature - weren't always there (it was added in the last six months or so - though the print feature was there longer).

And qvtqht: there was a NSFW warning, not that I know why Olaf's site would need it...
posted by twiki at 11:10 AM on August 21, 2008