Services: Content Management Systems
All web sites use code, right? So what’re we talking about?
If we’re going to be totally honest, flat HTML –– the base technology driving simple web pages –– is actually pretty easy stuff. We’re talking about the other stuff that makes a web site live and breathe.
unavoidable gearhead analogy. sorry.Things like dynamic page generation. The goofy sliding thing over to your right there & our portfolio mechanism. Image fades. Databases. Cross-site linkage and data transfer. Audio & video. Mobile templates. QR codes. Flash. Dynamically generated PDFs.
You know, the fun stuff.
We do all that here; we don’t just pick up widgets and embed them in a page and hope for the best. We’re also not reliant on a single technology set; we use a bunch of different stuff to get you and your site where they need to go. And we dig a challenge, so please don’t hesitate to ask us to bolt together something wicked cool.
We also rigorously test across a variety of platforms and browsers –– so we know where and how it works. [Fair Warning: We’re done with IE6. And we’re giving up IE7 soon.] We also code to standards, to make sure things perform the way they’re supposed to.
Gratuitous jQuery
We work in tried & true HTML4 –– the stuff that has driven the web for years and is still the most prevalent platform out there. We also work in HTML5 whenever we can get away with it; the horsepower there just makes the our inner geek giddy. As browsers become more compliant [you listening, Microsoft?] that’s the direction we’ll be moving.
Cascading Style Sheets [CSS] is HTML’s evil and slightly demented cousin Bob. This is how we control HTML and make it look a bit prettier, amongst other things. CSS2 fits with HTML4 browsers, and the same rules apply to CSS3 that drive HTML5. We’re getting there.
JavaScript is client-side [meaning in your browser, not on the server] scripting that allows for some of the fun you see here. AJAX means we can do JavaScripty things asynchronously, which makes it that much more fun. We work with a variety of libraries to do these sorts of things, but we’ll cop to being jQuery freaks at the end of the day.
Although we’ve worked in Perl and mucked about with Python, PHP remains our poison of choice in terms of server-side programming. When you’re on this site, for example, you’re not just washing dishes with PHP; you’re soaking in it.
The LAMP environment [Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python] is the platform that drives the majority of the web –– and where we work most of the time, with the notable exception of Business Catalyst installs. Linux is the operation system, Apache is the web server, MySQL is a database management system and the three Ps are programming languages. LAMP is Open Source, stable & powerful and adaptable –– and it’s our flavor of KoolAid. We really don’t do Windows.
Yup, we still work in Flash where it’s applicable. Admittedly, that’s becoming less & less so as JavaScript libraries become more powerful, new HTML/CSS support more widespread and mobile platforms more prevalent. We will admit to no small amount of curiosity as to where Adobe is going to take the platform next.
We’d be showing our age if we told you everything we’ve ever dabbled with –– but there are few highlights. Java, Objective C, Dashcode, Canvas, Ruby... if you can serve a web page or build a WebApp with it, we’ve probably played with it at some point. And we’re always up for seeking out new territories and new frontiers.
Code to live, live to code, blah, blah, blah.
