Advice please about final project

Hi there,
I'm just going to ramble off my brief for my final project and my idea and if possible, I would really appreciate some advice and suggestions. My lecturers are not being all that helpful and I really nned to start getting on with it!

So, the brief is basically- a project on anything you want...digital media wise. We have to present a pre production pack, the artefact, and then a post production pack. At the moment I am doing the pre production pack which involves budget, schedule, proposal, fuctional and technical specification, market review, audience analysis etc etc

Idea- I'm planning on creating a hypothetical fashion brand for females 18-30 in the form of a flash website (or if you think flash would be inappropriate please let me know.) It will have a feature where customers can view fashion combinations by individually changing the head garment, top, trousers, shoes. For example seeing different tops with the same trousers etc. From here they can add their chosen outfit to the cart, or individual items if they prefer/email to a friend/print it off and buy in store. Products also able to be viewed seperately.
I'll also be doing promotional material with this-tags, bags,
And then a digital 3d design of the store and the space.

So if you think this will work or not -the website mainly- or any other ideas in how it would work better then I will be extremely grateful. I'd have to use databases, log in/out and registration process also. I'm just a bit worried that this will be too difficult to do in flash.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions and advice

You would need to use php or asp which is easy enough to get information.

Flash, i have never used and luckily there is a Flash specialist on here called Jacob Haug who maybe able to answer your questions on that.

Have you used php/asp and flash?

Ive used php and flash, but not together before. I have found a basic tutorial, but may be too basic.
What are peoples views on flash online shopping websites? I have read that its a no no, so I'm not sure whether to to a php site and embed flash, or a whole flash website that uses php as a backend

Flash for a shopping cart is overkill ... really ....

I want to make the feature i mentioned in flash-do you suggest embedding it in php? OR Do A promotional website which doesnt have a shopping cart at all but the customers can print the outfit out or email it to someone?

This is sort of going half way. FYI, most people if they go online to shop prefer doing just that. They do not want to take an extra step to e-mail for more info or details on how to purchase. It would be like if you have a brick and mortar store and someone comes in to buy something and you tell them ' Sorry, even though we have it here, you need to go home and call us to place an order.' Real good way to loose a customer.

Thank you, that is sound advice, and that's why I'd like to do an online shop. But karinne suggested that a shopping cart process in flash is not a good idea, soo what would be the most effective way of doing this? Thanks

take a look at the gap website it may inspire you especially their product pages. example below.

http://www.gap.com/browse/product.do...900&pid=472873

nice effect when you hover over the large image.

It's probably OK to do the online catalogue using Flash so you can add see different outifts etc whcih is purely front-end but the back-end like the shopping cart should be done using a server side scripting language like php.

You can download php shopping cart scripts do you can see how they work

I think I'm going to do a php site, and embed the flash bits, as I think it will be easier to navigate and do the shopping procress, any thoughts?

It is always good to have in the back of your mind that flash isnt very good for SEO purposes so i suggest you dont do the whole website in flash. Mabey just the images? Also, flash might be hard to update with a CMS..

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