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I've lost the battle. We are going to have a small, brief, animation on
our home page. My goal is to make it as painless and unobtrusive as
possible. In terms of the design, we're pretty well set on what it's
going to be; and it involves moving words and geometric shapes (How
original!).
I'm going to farm out the execution to a freelance, but I want to ensure
that I am asking for the right thing.
Mr requirements are:
1. This must be compatible with the vast majority of browsers, as
delivered with new computers (that is, without the _user_ having had to
download any fancy plugins). Our target audience--the only people we
care about, really--consists of senior executives of major corporations.
So they are likely have the latest laptops with lots of bells and
whistles and are using IE 6. I just don't know what plugins ship by
default with such computers these days.
2. If the user does not have a compatible plugin, I want to degrade
gracefully to static art rather than challenging the user to download
the damn plugin. So I probably need some code on the page to detect that
condition, but I'd like this code snippet to be part of the deliverable,
unless you want to point me to a URL where I can grab it myself.
3. If it is technically feasible, I'd like the words that are animated
to be pulled from a {file|database table} so we can vary them over time
rather than having to go back to the freelance for rework.
4. If it is technically feasible, I'd like to be able to alter things
like font face, size, and color for particular text strings--again in an
external text file or database table--and have that information used
dynamically by the animation.
Given that wishlist, what technology should I be asking for? I mean,
it's probably going to be something that is either Flash or one of its
cousins, but which cousin in particular, and what is the minimum or
oldest version compatible with those requirements?
Thanks,
Dick
PS: I am not soliciting bids on techwr-l. When I get the above questions
answered satisfactorily, I'll be posting the project on a bid site,
where I anticipate the winning bid will be less than anyone here would
do it for.
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