Web user interface - technologies and skills to focus on?

[fuzzybabybunny]

My friend and I are interested in starting a business but we're not too sure what skills we need in other team members. I'm probably the least technically skilled of the bunch in terms of coding, but I know the actual market, end users, requirements, etc. My friend is a web design guy who does a bit of php and light mysql, which would be handy for things like customer databases and the like.

Our product is going to rely a lot on a great user interface that is very heavy on the drag and drop.

Need to upload photos, video, whatever? Simply drag and drop into our applet and thumbnails will show up. (Ex: Smugmug's photo upload applet)

Need to then re-arrange the contents? In the applet window you can select from a variety of arrangements like sort by date modified, date picture taken (read from EXIF), or fully customized sort. Drag and drop images into place. Shift/Ctrl click to select multiple images and drag the whole group into place. (ex. Apple's MobileMe galleries)

Need to rename things? If you've got acorn-1, acorn-2, and acorn-3, but want the labels for all three images to just be "acorn" you can apply something like "delete everything after and including the last "-" of the filename."

Users will be able to create their own little web page, only instead of a bunch of concrete templates to choose from, they can choose individual elements/widgets and then drag and drop them into place to arrange them on their web page. They can then save this template and use it for every subsequent mini web page they create. (ex. iWeb, only web-based)

Want to create a flier? Postcard? Pamphlet? Same drag and drop thing. You can drag an empty image box element into place, then drag an uploaded photo into it and the photo will resize automatically to fit the image box, or vice versa. (again, iWeb-like)

What kind of tech skills do we need in our team members in order to accomplish this kind of web-based UI?

 

[lyssword]

ajax(javascript), scriptaculous(javascript) comes to mind for the interface, maybe even flash.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Sounds like you'll need someone who is pretty damn up to speed on Javascript if you want to avoid using Flash or Silverlight. I'd advise hitting the books on JS and JQuery. I don't have a lot of JS experience so maybe I just suck, but I've found that sometimes seemingly trivial things can be very difficult to implement in JS. But nothing is impossible.

 

[troytime]

you're going to need someone with a year or two of javascript/dhtml/ajax experience.
my advice would be to have your php/mysql guy build the functionality with a working simple (html) interface first.
then polish it up with your whizbang features.

 

[aceO07]

You probably need someone who knows a lot of web design along with good UI experience. Simple UI can trump fancy UI if done properly.

JS, scriptaculous, jquery or any other js framework + CSS. Don't forget the supporting backend code.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Well, my PHP friend has a friend who is supposedly "really good" at jQuery. So I guess jQuery would be able to handle all these kinds of whizbang features? Or should I ask him to try focusing more on scriptaculous (their slogan of "It's all about the UI" seems very fitting for my needs...)

Is jQuery and scriptaculous just different ways of using javascript/ajax?

Is Javascript pretty universal? I'm a little confused on Java and Javascript. Does the user need to install Java to run Javascript? Because I read that Java is actually less prolific than Flash in terms of being installed on people's machines.

 

[aceO07]

Java isn't required for Javascript. You can use either one exclusive of the other.

Java wasn't that great years ago, so most people used it for backend coding instead of java applets for the browser.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: aceO07
Java isn't required for Javascript. You can use either one exclusive of the other.

Java wasn't that great years ago, so most people used it for backend coding instead of java applets for the browser.

Oh I see. But if I wanted to use a Java applet - say, a Java image uploader applet, the user would then have to install Java from Sun.

Alright, so the nice drag and drop interface can all be done using JavaSCRIPT, which doesn't require anything extra on the client's end. But the photo uploader would probably have to be a Java applet, in which case the client would need to install Java, we'd need to get a Java guru on our team, etc.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

How do you guys feel about using Python for something like this?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Python is a fine choice of language, it plays well with the LAMP stack. If you're used to working in languages like Java or C# it might take a bit of time to get your head around some unfamiliar language constructs. Google uses Python in many of their major projects.

 

[troytime]

you don't need java to upload images.
it can be handled with php

 

[ahurtt]

Originally posted by: troytime
you don't need java to upload images.
it can be handled with php

PHP is an interpreted server side language used to dynamically render HTML/CSS/Javascript is it not? How do you upload photos from a browser using PHP? PHP does not execute in the browser the way a Java applet can. Yes, PHP could handle photos uploaded to the server on the server side but it could not run on the client browser machine. With a Java applet you can write a java graphic user interface that runs IN the web browser on the client machine and you don't have to use javascript/DHTML and the like.

 

[troytime]

Originally posted by: ahurtt

Originally posted by: troytime
you don't need java to upload images.
it can be handled with php

PHP is an interpreted server side language used to dynamically render HTML/CSS/Javascript is it not? How do you upload photos from a browser using PHP? PHP does not execute in the browser the way a Java applet can. Yes, PHP could handle photos uploaded to the server on the server side but it could not run on the client browser machine. With a Java applet you can write a java graphic user interface that runs IN the web browser on the client machine and you don't have to use javascript/DHTML and the like.

i'm fully aware of what php is.
You're really over complicating a simple html form though.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: troytime

Originally posted by: ahurtt

Originally posted by: troytime
you don't need java to upload images.
it can be handled with php

PHP is an interpreted server side language used to dynamically render HTML/CSS/Javascript is it not? How do you upload photos from a browser using PHP? PHP does not execute in the browser the way a Java applet can. Yes, PHP could handle photos uploaded to the server on the server side but it could not run on the client browser machine. With a Java applet you can write a java graphic user interface that runs IN the web browser on the client machine and you don't have to use javascript/DHTML and the like.

i'm fully aware of what php is.
You're really over complicating a simple html form though.

True, but this requirement

Need to upload photos, video, whatever? Simply drag and drop into our applet and thumbnails will show up. (Ex: Smugmug's photo upload applet)

will require some sort of client side control (Java applet, Flash, custom ActiveX, etc.) with elevated security privileges to allow users to drag photos directly from their desktop and have them upload without using an HTML form.

 

[Spad3S]

Not sure if you already decided on anything, but GWT with the SmartGWT plugin has great support for drag and drop. It is pretty easy to learn to use as well.