Posterwall demo

The Posterwall demo was designed by Metro Parc to show of some features that we think are crucial in a rich internet application.

All changes are stored automatically. After a revisit of the page, you still see your posterwall. Every second or so, the posterwall checks to see if there are any changes and stores those on the server.

You can't mess up the wall: The posterwall logic keeps you from creating overlapping posters. Images snap to a fixed grid position.

The controls are fairly straightforward and can be operated by casual computer users. You just click on an image in the right picklist and it's immediately wired: The background gets highlighted to indicate that you will be able to do something with this image. Now, when you move over the wall, a thumbnail of the image follows your mouse. No need to keep one of the mouse buttons pressed. You want to scroll? No problem. There is a large content section between your selection list and the poster wall? No problem. As long as the selected image is highlighted, it will stick to your mouse pointer when you're on the poster wall. Click the image on the pick list again, and it is dropped from the selection.

Posterwall only uses HTML, CSS and Javascript and no Flash: this makes it easier to mix content and application. You can easily take some piece of HTML, that you already styled with CSS and has a list of items, as the source for your posters. The poster wall can be anywhere on the webpage, and may even be collapsed and out of sight. Anything that you can do with CSS is allowed, thus utilizing your existing design workflow effectively.

The application does not work with javascript disabled, but your content, i.e. the posters, is still available to e.g. search engines such as Google.

Obviously, the use of posterwall is not limited to photos.
For example, you could also use it to create a simple garden design tool: Create a list of images of grass tiles, shrubs and trees, and drop them onto your imaginary garden!
Do you sell products that come in various sizes, like milk cartons? Posterwall makes it possible to create a visual shopping basket with all products in their relative size: You know you always have a milk carton that is just as tall as a cucumber, so you can immediately spot the fact that you dropped the 1/4lt carton on the basket: all of a sudden your cucumber looks three times as big as the milk carton: Your eyes immediately spot the mistake. That's not possible with shopping baskets where all product images are reduced to the same square pixel size.