Austria based Wollzelle, has recently helped Gucci launch what some are calling the widest
website online. At first glance, the site provides all the necessary visual
elements that a fashion brand should contain: slick photos, easing animation,
and a slick, scrollable UI. However, upon closer inspection you’ll notice that
the site does not contain one piece of Flash, which explains the fast loading
time. The magic of transitions and movement in this case is provided completely
by JavaScript (with a little help from CSS). The fact that all the elements on
the page are standard HTML drastically decreases the load on the browser and
also increases usability since no player download is required and a larger
percentage of browsers are able to display the content.
time staff consists of only three people. The small creative shop is run by Christina Fried, Thomas
Pamminger, and Thomas Fuchs (whom I’ve had the please of meeting).
If you’re a developer than Thomas’s name might sound familiar. That’s because
he’s the brains behind the Script.aculo.us
JavaScript effects library. The library (built on top of the popular Prototype
library) provides many of the visual effects that appear on Gucci’s website,
including transitions, sliding, drag & drop, and a plethora of others.
a web-based asset manager that acts and feels like a Mac OS X application and
takes advantage of a multitude of Web 2.0 features including live-searching,
tagging, and a general desktop-like feel.
simple formula that includes taking the time to plan, develop, and execute.
Logic seems to be a big factor of the shop’s execution, where great thought is
put into how elements will behave and interact with each other. It will be
interesting to see if the company can maintain this level of self-pace as more
and more work begins to pour in.
Max Zabramny
Comments
Connections
I think that it´s great to move dynamic html forward but in this case I feel that Gucci made the wrong descision. I doubt that it works well in older browsers. I´m using Firefox with a 2 gig ram comp. And all the transitions are very slow and flickery. I can only imagine how it looks on older browsers, or older computers for that matter (mine is brand new). These effects in flash are very basic, so why not use flash instead and avoid hours of programming to get the scripts working in all browsers?
But the http://script.aculo.us/ seems awesome!
why not just use flash?
if its done correctly there is no long load time, the CSS/JS method still loads large JPG’s and lots and lots of JS code…
i would argue that you could make it load faster in flash with less download/upgrade requirements.
I generally keep up-to-date with my software, but gucci.com would not load in safari, i had to upgrade. [i dont use tiger on this machine so upgrading to safari 2 was not an oprion for me]. I then tried firefox which i had to upgrade from V1 to V1.5 [16Mb download]… the average mac user would have gotten frustrated and gone Versace instead…
overall, well done with the CSS/js biz but i think the site is a bit clunky, flash would have done a better job! yes?
I have the latest version of firefox and I am still not able to load the new gucci site- I am a gucci dealer