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Do a "design your own" thingamy
I’m looking at putting a site together which contains a section that allows someone to design their own layouts.
So, like, you pick a background graphic from the presets — or upload your own — then add / configure text/fonts and it updates (either as-you-type, or on submit) to show your proof. You can move stuff around until you’re happy, then say “do it”, pay for it (don’t worry about the pay bit — got that covered) and it stores the final version, notifying me so I can login and take action.
An example of the kind of thing is in the business card design sector — although I find that site a tiny bit clunky, it does the job.
Trouble is I don’t have much idea where to begin. Should I use the gd library to inject the text on-the-fly and redisplay the image? Or use a variety of CSS templates that lay stuff out position:absolute over the top of a background graphic? Or some kind of drag ‘n drop jQuery that I somehow take a ‘snapshot’ of when the user says “I’m done”? Or something else? I’m a bit loathe to write an app in Flash or Java, primarily because I’m crap at both.
Are there any toolkits out there that can help with this kind of thing; ones I can drop into a site and configure? I haven’t turned anything up yet via my searches but then I don’t really know the terminology to search for :-)
Any help or guidance appreciated, thanks!
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Re: Do a "design your own" thingamy
There’s a slightly similar project ín GSoC 2009 for WordPress themes. No deliverables yet.
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Re: Do a "design your own" thingamy
Bloke,
I’ve seen something like this (somewhere) that allows you to design your own t-shirts. When you’re all done it submits the design to be printed. I’ll dig around and see if I can find one – assuming they aren’t flash – you might be able to get your hands on some squishy parts to see how they did it.
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