Difficulty / Pricing to: Image appears when cursor rolls over?

There is not too much difficulty involved with presenting an image on a mouse rollover. That function should take an hour or less of work if all of the requirements are known upfront.

The effort could go higher if you want to add some "special sauce" to the mix. By that I am thinking about the usability and life expectancy (quality) of the code.

If these words, links, or images are to change in the future, some extra programming effort up front will make changing or expanding these parameters a breeze in the future - by simply changing a few configuration lines instead of poking through the actual function code. This would be highly recommended if the person maintaining the code has limited programming skills.

With programming, you often get what you pay for. If you always take the cheapest bid, you may not get the best result. With a simple function like this, it may not matter a whole lot. However, if you want any of that "special sauce", you want an "artist" with expericence maintaining code over long periods of time; not just a fire-and-forget programmer. Experienced programmers (code artists) will charge more money but deliver higher quality.

The key to successful outsourcing will be to make sure every detail of what you want is clearly defined in you project request. That will help remove some of the padding in the bids you recieve. If the request is unclear or poorly defined, responsible programmers will have to build some padding into the bid expecting to have to spend extra time to figure out the specific requirements later. Its cheaper and faster for you to spend some time to clearly document exactly what you want up front instead of paying your programmer to figure it out email by email.

Thanks for the reply. Great point you made on outsourcing.


Quick question:
To better understand who I'll need to hire, what type of scripting is best for this? flash, php, css... ?

I'm thinking--with my very limited knowledge in programming--that flash will look better? Will it cost more?


...pretty lost here.

i think most of this stuff can be acihved useing javascripts only!!