PostersByColor lets you select art prints and posters based on over a hundred color swatches

May 3, 2010 8:50 AM

PostersByColor lets you select art prints and posters based on over a hundred color swatches
I always had trouble just browsing through categories like "red" or "blue," so I made a better way. Not only are prints associated with finer gradations in color, but it will automatically provide similar and contrasting hues.

Behind the scenes, it uses jQuery (no Flash!) to provide a rich, draggy-droppy, full-window, ajaxified interface. Along the way I've learned a lot about what's possible in the browser alone, without plugins, and I see a pretty rich future especially with HTML5. (Still, it's not Flash...)

Feedback would be greatly appreciated, as I have a bit of a feature list and not enough time to implement everything. What would make this better?

posted by pengale (8 comments total)

I'm a big fan of any online shopping experience that utilizes V!5sual 5earch, but here's a fair warning that this kind of thing is really hot right now on the intellectual property and patent circuit. I wish you the best of luck and think this is an awesome idea, but beware the fate of Modista.
posted by carsonb at 2:04 PM on May 3, 2010

I love this.

I don't know if this is on your end or mine, but I'm having an issue with some color swatches staying put as I scroll through. They show up layered on top of the others, but when I mouse over, they disappear.
posted by emilyd22222 at 2:44 PM on May 3, 2010

carsonb: Thanks for the link. The chilling effect from broad "idea" patents is concerning when developing any kind of software. Fortunately, this isn't the only thing I've got going, and the methods used are relatively simple.

emilyd22222: Oops. Probably a bug. I'll get on that. Glad you like the app.
posted by pengale at 2:59 PM on May 3, 2010

This is a really interesting idea!

Is it possible to select a poster based on several colors?
Also, when I choose to set my swatch to be the background I couldn't figure out how to go back to the orginal color.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 5:15 PM on May 3, 2010

a womble is an active kind of sloth: Thanks. Using more than one color is theoretically possible, just a matter of ordering the results (e.g. should it prioritize a more even blend of colors vs. a lot of one and spots of the other?) I might try it either way. The original background color is just one of the neutral swatches.
posted by pengale at 5:29 AM on May 4, 2010

Am I doing something wrong? There's nothing draqgable in Safari and Firefox on Windows. I click on one f the swatches below and try to drag it, but nothing happens.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:13 AM on May 5, 2010

Brandon Blatcher: You weren't doing anything wrong. I just fixed a 11pm change from last night that fixed something in IE and knocked out something completely different in Firefox.

If I'm going to have to do all-browser tests after every change I might reconsider Flash :/ Since most of jQuery's positioning and other manipulations are done through CSS, the browsers' CSS differences affect everything even through jQuery itself is fairly cross-browser compatible. And an app like this uses CSS that's very different from the typical site's, so conventional knowledge of columns, etc., doesn't help.
posted by pengale at 6:43 AM on May 5, 2010

On the plus side, I have some automated browser testing ready to deploy as soon as I get it working in Parallels on OS X. Still, it's the principle of the thing...
posted by pengale at 6:49 AM on May 5, 2010