I was responsible for all database design, back-end and front-end code and all flash on the site.

Developing for Francis Ford Coppola is like watching one of his movies. It starts off a bit slow and sets the field of characters. Then it moves into the second act and feelings and story begin to emerge and in the third act the story crescendos and then ends with all the lose ends tied up and you walk away feeling satisfied.

Front Page – The Flash Timeline

The front page was the most challenging aspect of the site and the piece most dear to Francis. His goal was to represent a time-line of the winery and his story with wine. He also didn’t want a simple and plain time line, he wanted something that had the feeling of an old school catalog, maybe an old Sears Robuck catalog or Whole Earth. Lastly he wanted some interaction and animations to bring it all to life.

I built a small modular framework for the timeline where each ‘module’ derives from a base class and each have a set of shared functionality. I also created modules that can be reused such as those that display single images, slide shows and flipping images. Along side those we also have custom modules built with specific pieces of code and functionality like the “swimmers wanted” module and the logo/news rotation module. With the framework and module structure I designed, modules can be created, reused and placed into the timeline with ease.

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