If you missed the debut of The Roanoke Times' latest special package Homestand, you're in luck -- the Web doesn't strike out.

Here's a summary:

From the crack of dawn until the last light pole at Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium is shut off later that night, there's rarely a slow moment for those involved in running an Avalanche homestand. The Roanoke Times spent some extra time during the team's four-game series with the Kinston Indians in an attempt to spotlight those who prepare the field, prepare the food and entertain the masses who are looking forward to -- and even expecting -- a special experience at the ballpark every night.

Aside from the wonderful story by Katrina Waugh, this package features a host of multimedia items including an innovative use of video courtesy the new(ish) studio. This can be seen on the interactive link.

Also new are several new uses of the scriptaculous JavaScript library, and Prototype framework. Click the "about" and "contact" links located at the bottom of the Homestand page, and watch the effect. You can see a variation on this when viewing page two of the story -- no more links to multiple pages!

For the multimedia "pop-ups," we used the Lightbox Gone Wild script from the good folks at Particle Tree. This is a modified version of the Lightbox script we are already using to display photos and graphics throughout roanoke.com.

For the Homestand, this script allows us (via the beauty of AJAX) to pull in the Flash objects overlaid on the primary page. In this way, control is never taken out of the users' hands. There are also links to the individual multimedia items as well.

One of my favorite parts of this project is the contact form, revealed when you click the "contact" link at the bottom of your screen. Using this form is much easier than opening your e-mail client, and allows you to send your thoughts on the project to both the dot.com and sports sections.

Of course, you're always welcome to post your thoughts on the Homestand here on this blog.

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• Posted by Patrick Beeson in Web development
• :: Comments (2)