texasrenegade

I first want to thank you for allowing me to register and post here all in one shot. Thank you.

I am currently a web designer but soon will be working on a new project out of my scope or ability, but that is ok, I will simply be more of a consultant on this project. So with that, there may be a job posting following this in this near future.

First let me give you a spec of what it appears the job will be...

An interactive DVD, maybe cd-rom, with a very large interactive technical drawing map. So as one cannot display the whole map at once, or could but would lose all detail, the first problem is navigating this large technical drawing. Being able to scroll around and click on sections.

Once one finds an area or section - then they need to click on this area and get a few choices... via a pop up box with links I guess... and press one of the choices.

Then a new window would pop up depending on the link they pressed for the following:

1 a slideshow of that area whereas the slides have captions.
2 an informative history of what work has been done on that particular area.
3 a techical report of that area that is very complex and not informative but meaningful to the techs.

The last thing that needs to happen is that someone can take this interactive technical drawing, and make their own project file. In other words, somehow be able to keep the use of the technical drawing (interactive map) and add their own photos and either send off as a zip file or burn to cd-rom.

I think the last piece here is this needs to work in both the mac and pc world.

So I am not sure if this is flash, dhtml, C#, C++, or some language I am not even familiar with.

I am not even sure one can use the techical drawing with present hot spots and create or add photos but not use any informational pages but include some of the original photos. In other words, to alter what we have done and create a version for themselves, but not on DVD but a cd-rom. So file size or limits would have to come into play. So to limit file size, the would not provide the links for info or technical pages, just photos with captions. And the use of currect photos with captions.

I hope that explains what the project is, and I can answer any questions, but does anyone here have any suggestions on what type program language to approach this with, so I can farm out this job to the right programmer?

Here is a poor example...

http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/gps_sample1.cfm

I like the full map, and the small area blowup then the large area blowup. Now think of the large area having multiple hot spots so they can click on one, and get a list of three things to choose from - slides with captions, information for a layman, or technical data. The map always stays available whereas any other window or whatever that pops up can be closed.

Does that make sense?

Then for them to take that same map, and use some of our photos with our captions, and add their photos with their captions, but not have links to information or technical data, just photo slide shows of each hot spot area.


Thanks to anyone who read all this... thanks too for all replies. What program would or could do this for mac and pc?


randal

BadBit

Hmm, this could be done in alot of ways, I'm guessing your making this to work on a pc only and not dvd players and such. If you made the project in flash you could be compiled and ran on all computers.

If you wanted to make the porject in a middle level languge, witch would take more time, but improve the amout of functionality and give you more options. (please note that this would not be cost affective for your project). You would have to compile the source on each individual operating system you wanted the progect to run.

One option is to make this project from source and put it on a server so your clients or intended clientel can stream this from the server so it's not os dependent, but as it's a cd you could nclude both on a cd.

Personaly i would recomend making this project in flash or anouther movie/vid editor. This is so you can target a larger clientel with the same project, maybe even making it possable to play in a dvd player through dvd formatt or vcd.

hope this helped.

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iignotus

I believe BadBit hits it on the head. Macromedia Flash would be the perfect language/framework for this type of project, and can be run from a cd on Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever.

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texasrenegade

Thanks guys. Yes, the amount of work and size of photos, number of documents, etc... will require a DVD. I would love for the DVD to play on tv's and yet the DVD to work on pc's using better resolution. I was just not sure if Flash was the best way to go.

Can Flash allow the user to create their own slide show using the original hot spot map, and probably a mix of our original photos and their additional photos, so that they can then send to others to view what they create?

Thanks again guys. Guess I need to talk with a Flash guru.


r

iignotus

Flash can do just about anything, it's very programmable. The DVD will work fine for computers, since a file is a file.

However, I've never heard of a Flash player for DVD-players, but I'm sure it exists somewhere. Worse comes to worst, you can always convert each possible section of the view of the flash file into DVD-video, and make it like a DVD-menu, though that will be very time-consuming.

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texasrenegade

Thanks iignotus,

I appreciate your time and replies on this. Guess I need a bold flasher...



r