Originally published December 3 2005
Etsy shopping site specializes in all things handmade
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The self-contained shopping site uses flash content to be visually stimulating and innovative. Many unique features are available to users, including zooming in and out and clicking and dragging to move items.
For the record, Etsy is not a comparative shopping search engine and it does not spider the web for results.
In fact, it's a specialty site which explicitly states: "Your place to buy and sell all things handmade".
As such, it's not a true apples-to-apples competitor with the likes of DealTime and Froogle.
You're in Control Etsy is all about control and options.
Despite now apparently becoming the age of Ajax, Etsy goes back to an old school interface: in fact, the only dynamic control on the internet that works the same and looks the same in every browser: flash.
In some of them, your scroll-wheel even lets you zoom in and out.
If you have multiple items visible in one of the flash interfaces, you can move the items around by clicking and dragging.
maps (beta) also zooms in and out via scroll-wheel.
Here's my favorite feature so far: if you want the item out of the way, you can drag it and toss it, and it goes off-screen!
Not that I have a problem with the ubiquitous white text-based search box, but don't you also want more from your product searches?
You probably have a clear picture in your head before you even start searching.
Why not be able to search by those criteria?
If you want something of a hard-to-describe color, wouldn't you rather point to the color rather than describe it?
Furthermore, I've never found a single use for Crayola's Burnt Sienna crayon.
But if I know I want something to match my couch, just let me point to the part of a color-grid that's the same color as my couch.
This is a shopping site; why not let the user set min/max price ranges?
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