Soapberries
Hmmmm... how am I going to redo the EsoGalleries (soapberries)? Up until about a week ago, I was just assuming I would redo the galleries in the same fashion of design as I have been working on, as seen on the home page, blog and slideshow pages. I suddenly realized that I could make a Flash slideshow if I wanted. That would allow me to make some neat interface components and fading effects that would otherwise require gross Javascript, something I am trying to shy away from. I have seen a lot of slideshows done in Flash that really look nice, and the end result is far more media oriented and complimentary to the images than strict HTML.
On the other hand, I am somewhat against using Flash too much in my site and want my images to be viewable by the largest possible audience using all the standard browsers. If I decide to use Flash (which I know virtually zip about at this point), then I would not be satisfied unless I could create an interface that loads images incrementally, rather than requiring a huge, slow download when the page is loaded initially. In addition, I would still probably create a simpler HTML/PHP/MySQL version as an alternative. We'll see, I guess. I need to get my mind set on creating a sleek, lean interface in HTML before I go after Flash, because that will be a huge undertaking.