Any web design wizards around?

[Hawkmoon]

My wife wants a web site for what she hopes will be a home-based business. She has now had three (or four?) different people from her native country take a crack at it. Three years have expired, and we still don't have a web site. I'm going to have to do it myself ... and I don't know beans about HTML or web site creation.

Question: Wife really likes photos with "soft" frame -- where the page background fades out and the edges of the photo fade in.

How does one DO that?

[charby]

Adobe Flash

[Nick1911]

Adobe Flash

Anymore, CSS can do that kind of thing too.

[RevDisk]

I have a business that makes web sites for folks. 

You can do it a couple ways. Flash is one, JavaScript is another.

Two options. Hire a professional, or troll web snippet/template sites until you find something similar. License the code if paid version, or stick to GPL code.

[never_retreat]

The more important question, what is the purpose of the site?
Sell a product?
Informational?
Etc.

[Boomhauer]

Rev I need to talk with you about that. Gonna need a website for my welding business. Nothing fancy, just good solid website.

[cordex]

Are you asking how to make the border of an image gradient to transparent?

[Hawkmoon]

Are you asking how to make the border of an image gradient to transparent?

Ummm ... yeah, that sounds like what I want.

I think.

"Feathered border"? Is that the same thing?

[bedlamite]

Ummm ... yeah, that sounds like what I want.

I think.

"Feathered border"? Is that the same thing?

[charby]

So are these images static, or do they bleed via motion with the background?

[Hawkmoon]

So are these images static, or do they bleed via motion with the background?

Static. Just a photo with a soft edge that fades into the page background.

[cordex]

Static. Just a photo with a soft edge that fades into the page background.

Then I wouldn't mess with either flash or JavaScript.  You can do that in Photoshop or Gimp. Save the image as a PNG with transparency and you will be fine. Less work for the browser to do and it will look good on more platforms. You should be able to set up an action or whatever the Gimp equivalent is to make it easy to run on images.

[RevDisk]

Rev I need to talk with you about that. Gonna need a website for my welding business. Nothing fancy, just good solid website.

Tis what we unofficially specialize in. Good, functional sites that make it easy to get the info to where it needs to go. The pricing reflects it.

Then I wouldn't mess with either flash or JavaScript.  You can do that in Photoshop or Gimp. Save the image as a PNG with transparency and you will be fine. Less work for the browser to do and it will look good on more platforms. You should be able to set up an action or whatever the Gimp equivalent is to make it easy to run on images.

Except each and every product will require the treatment.  It may still be the way to go. OR, making a transparent overlay. You'd only need to do one per size.

I was thinking specifically of jQuery.  It's already done on a regular basis.
http://www.bennadel.com/blog/1014-Creating-Transparent-Gradients-With-jQuery.htm

[Brad Johnson]

Good, functional sites that make it easy to get the info to where it needs to go.

Ditto times elebinty bazillion.

Flashy, spastic, grandiose websites are great for marketing... and SUUUUUUUUCCKK as electronic storefronts.  If you want to use them for the marketing side of the eStore, great.  Knock yourself out.  But ditch the interactive windows, sliders, cute little pop ups, and "can you believe how neat this is" features on the product selection / customer interaction pages.  High-zoot whizbangery on that page is distracting, confusing, and generally just annoying as hell.  Make the product selection and payment pages simple, straightforward, obvious, and intuitive.  Lemme pick the damned item, select any options, and pay for it without having to learn the frakking page controls, or dealing with your version of Microsoft Clip popping up all over the place and bugging the crap out of me.  Follow-me dialog boxes should be punishable by death.

Example of how to do it wrong (product selection is confusing and it is very, very, very easy to not get what you think you've selected):
www.v2cigs.com

Example of how to do it right:
www.amazon.com

Brad

[RevDisk]

Ditto times elebinty bazillion.

Flashy, spastic, grandiose websites are great for marketing... and SUUUUUUUUCCKK as electronic storefronts.  If you want to use them for the marketing side of the eStore, great.  Knock yourself out.  But ditch the interactive windows, sliders, cute little pop ups, and "can you believe how neat this is" features on the product selection / customer interaction pages.  High-zoot whizbangery on that page is distracting, confusing, and generally just annoying as hell.  Make the product selection and payment pages simple, straightforward, obvious, and intuitive.  Lemme pick the damned item, select any options, and pay for it without having to learn the frakking page controls, or dealing with your version of Microsoft Clip popping up all over the place and bugging the crap out of me.  Follow-me dialog boxes should be punishable by death.

Brad

Problem is getting paid enough to make it worth while. We're sticking mostly to the B2B market, but also bars slash bands market. Theoretically, folks that understand if you want quality, you need to pay for it. Bottom of the barrel is cheap, but you get what you pay for. I often tell folks that want to buy cheap hosting "Ask them if they back up their hosting".

Plus a lot of them try to be artists. Another standard line I use on customers that want zazz. "What do you go to a business web site for? - Hours, address, phone number, 9 out of 10 times? - So, what should we focus on?"

[Hawkmoon]

Found it.

It is called a "feather" edge. Moderately easy to do in Photoshop ... which, of course, we don't have. Thanks to the deity of your choice, however, we do have freeware. There is an open source image editing package out there called GIMP, and a variant on that called GimpShop that makes it look a bit more like Photoshop. And, with a small bit of a learning curve, I think I'm getting a handle on it.

Unedited photo of Torres del Paine national park in Chile:




Same image, with rounded corners and feathered edges:

[Harold Tuttle]

so you wife wants a car but she is hung up on the color of the lightbulb in the glove box...

[Harold Tuttle]

edges need to fade to 100 percent transparent so that the picture floats on the background

the image must be a png file to support transparency

[Hawkmoon]

edges need to fade to 100 percent transparent so that the picture floats on the background

the image must be a png file to support transparency

Thank you for that, Sir. I probably would never have figured that out on my own.

[RevDisk]

Not a gimp expert, but you should be able to make an overlay with the appropriate transparent borders.  Might be able to reuse that.

[Boomhauer]

Not a gimp expert

That would be Jamis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8kPqAV_74M