We are committed to the highest standards in web design and development. As such we believe in adhering to recommendations put forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in developing our websites. As we provide web services, it is our personal philosophy to only develop using open formats. As such we will not be able to produce proprietary websites which are best viewed in one browser or another. All our websites are best viewed in ANY browser.
The Internet is a fluid environment, where none has absolute control over the web browser, operating system or even web appliance your visitors are using. There exists far too many websites which depend solely on one web browser because the developers have made use of one development package or another that capitalizes on proprietary features found only in that browser. Standards exist to prevent that practice and in a perfect world all developers of web browsers will adhere to these standards. However to gain a competitive edge over other browsers, some companies who develop browsers introduce minor features which are not approved by the W3C and begin touting them as web standards. Developers then latch on to these features and create websites which can only be rendered in these browsers. The problem with that however is that not every visitor to your website uses the same operating system you do. The company which released the browser may drop support for non-standard features in future versions (as was the case with Netscape a few years ago) which will necessitate the redesign of your website to work in future browsers. Adhering to standards from the beginning will save you time and money and potentially increase your return visitor base.
Many web designers hail CSS, cascading stylesheets as a holy grail of layout. As CSS becomes more widely supported websites can really take advantage of CSS layout. CSS was intended to separate design from content. CSS does a great job of that if properly implemented. However an immediate benefit of CSS is reduced code. As stylesheets are written once, and work on all new pages. The developer only has to write this once, although it is a bit more involved to develop. This translates into a direct cost savings for you the customer as we spend less time laying out your site, and you don't have to worry about breaking the layout when updating the content on the website.
This also translates to an immediate benefit for your visitors. Your pages will load faster, as they contain less markup; they will be smaller. Stylesheets also allow you to create elements on a webpage that were once only possible with Javascript and graphics which added to your visitors download time. Now your visitors can experience your website as it loads in the shortest possible time. If pages load faster for your visitors, the more likely they are to stay at your website, and the more likely they are to return and become actively involved in your website. Not only can CSS save you money, it can also make you money.
Web services are becoming increasingly popular. They rely mainly on server-side programs which power your website including dedicated programs and scripts which access databases and other content from local or even remote sources such as stock quotes of RSS feeds. We firmly believe in the use of open source applications and open formats for developing and executing server-side processes. There are five main advantages to you, cost, security, reliability, support and portability. Open source applications are developed by a community of developers devoted to a project who believe in the mantra, release early and release often. Extensive testing and development go into most of these applications making them more robust, secure and cost-effective means to deploying applications. While proprietary databases exist, such as Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server, they tend to cost alot of money. If however your web host has access to one of these databases they are quite reliable. However if you decide to change web hosts for what ever reason, you application built around a proprietary database can not be hosted on any web server. There exist however open source databases which are installed by default on most web hosting providers such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. These databases are excellent and can be used in commercial websites at no extra cost to you. As for the security, the Open Source development community are proactive developers fixing problems and flaws usually within hours of discovering a problem with their software.
This site adheres to W3C recommendations and Accessibility guidelines for disabled users. Although our layout is purposely disabled in older browsers that do not support CSS2, we ensure that all the content of the website is still readable and connected for users of browsers such as Netscape Communicator 4.7 or even text based browsers such as Lynx. It is our commitment to excellence that separates us from the rest.
We understand that a website was made to be used by real users, and as such we've oriented our thinking to revolve around the users who will be using these websites to promote User-centered design. We understand that it's not so much an issue of whether we could use the latest and greatest technology available rather it is comes down to the question of delivery of user-applicable content using the most accessible and usable medium available.