Shiny stuff rocks
Like anyone who designs I want ultimate control. Sure, the typical email postcard with text in a div next to an image is nice and it works… but wouldn’t it be great to have really control it and composite the text into a bitmap!?
Oh wait, that’d be like 2nd generation web design (which some people are still practicing).
This site demonstrates a nifty way of selecting a postcard image. This kind of shiny stuff attracts people and a few small tidbits on our site will go a long way. The improved home page was the first step… well, the academic projects like Mongol were the real first step, but in terms of the general web site the current home page is about as gee whiz a place as anywhere on the site.
Small things done well will go a long way.
A postcard viewer that you could then compose an actual email with would be great… even if the result is a very typical e-card.
This viewer has one problem I see — the rows above and below the current image should be present so you could scroll in any direction. That the right or left image is present rocks — and is a cool way of showing a small affordance or suggestion of what you should do next with the UI. Then, this post wasn’t intended to fully critique the UI.