MindScape

Not all guidelines are meant to be restrictive. Quality standards, the guidelines for web development, are meant to establish a semblance of uniformity in all web services delivered.

Issued by W3C, Quality Standards stipulate the various parameters any web development service/product must match up to, to be considered up-to-the-mark The Internet today is a beehive of all sorts of web services. Some are good, some are top-of-the-line, and some are a waste of time.

Quality standards aim to eliminate this discrepancy by promoting researched standards so that all web products and services are user-friendly and make good sense to invest in.

The need for standards

Web designers and developers are humans, which means their work reflects their viewpoints to varying extents. These viewpoints can be broadly classified under:

• Scripting of Websites
  

Using XHTML standards

XHTML is an extension of HTML that is cleaner and leaner. It allows websites to be viewed on various devices (mobile phones etc.) which was not easy with HTML.

Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standards

Websites have varying degrees of complexity in their underlying codes. With HTML <font> tag, re-writing or changing the content of the website becomes tedious as it involves extensive re-configuration of the existing code.

To overcome this, W3C Quality Standards stipulate the use of CSS standards. It is a potent way of separating the style of a webpage from its content. In doing so, it enables very easy re- configuration of the page’s content.

Using CSS greatly improves the browser compatibility of a website and also improves its readability, while the lesser development time involved cuts development costs.

• Readability of websites

Text used in website content varies widely in terms of font size, color, font style(bold, italic), character/line spacing etc. Thus, the same block of text :

“Einstein had bad grades in school.”

can be written as :

“Einstein had bad grades in school.” or Einstein had bad grades in school.

Reading both the types requires concentrated effort. This hampers easy readability of websites.

Thus, Quality standards decree the use of easier text representation (font, color contrast, spacing etc.) for maximum readability.

• Website Accessibility

The spectrum of Internet users ranges from the top-end users with the latest technologies at their disposal, to the other end of users with the bare minimum required for browsing.

Clearly, websites designed to hog system resources are viewed best only on high-end systems. Such websites deny accessibility to the rest of the users, which in a way harms the website owners themselves as they lose out on the bulk of the potential visitors.

Quality Standards save the day here by stipulating user-friendly web development guidelines that maximize the website’s accessibility. The more the visitors, the better the business opportunities.

• Internationalization of Websites

Most modern browsers use the internationally accepted Unicode (UTF-8, UTF-16 etc.) character set. However, not all documents transmitted over the Internet conform to the standards of this set owing to the uniqueness of language scripts used. This results in a discrepancy among the browser being used and the text to be displayed on-screen.

Quality standards thus recommend the labeling of each document used with the character set in use for easier identification and representation.

Also, other commonly experienced discrepancies like which format to use while writing dates is taken care of by W3C guidelines. Thus, the accepted date format is yyyy-mm-dd. (letters with their usual meanings).

Eg. : 04-05-1984 could either mean 4th May 1984 or April 5^th 1984.

But with the use of quality standards, 1984-05-04 can only mean May 4^th, 1984

Although not exhaustive, this brief overview of the prevailing quality standards in web development is an endeavor to give you a better understanding of the guidelines we, at Vinove, while designing web sites for our clients.

Alec, a young sprog in Firm A, hits upon a brilliant concept that could revolutionize the way his firm handles clients. The idea needs extensive web solutions to make sure it takes off and succeeds. He approaches his seniors and gets the nod to go look for a professional firm that’ll give them what they want.

Before leaving, Alec is mildly apprehensive about the idea. Although it looks grand, its details are foggy. “I’d better find someone good who know their craft”, he muses.

Scenario 1:

Firm Acme, well established and reputed in web solutions, accept Alec’s project and promise to deliver within a time-line of 4 months. Acme prides itself on its methodical, no nonsense or deviation approach to completing projects. And they have their stellar record of their past to back them up. So Acme proceeds with the project overflowing with self assurance , convinced it has understood Alec’s concept better than he could ever do himself. Alec is hesitant about voicing his concerns. “They’ve not earned a good name for nothing. Maybe they can grasp the unsaid as well”. “You’ll hear from us in 3 months, Sir” is all he is told.

Weeks later, with the project very close to completion, Alex and his boss are called for a demonstration. Acme wasn’t keen on this, knowing they were good with their work. But company policies stipulated it so they had to.

The demonstration proceeds and progresses well, until Alec’s boss comes up with an innocuous query. Innocuous to him, that is. Acme professionals look flabbergasted. “ Why would you want to do that?” they retort. “Why not ?” goes Alec’s boss. “Well if that’s what it is, you should have told us about this before !” Alec squirms in his seat, uneasiness dripping from his face. “You never even let us talk to you about the project while it was being drafted. You guys were so smug about your abilities you didn’t think it would be advisable to keep us in the loop!” was all he manages, afraid those were the last words he’d get to speak for his firm before being thrown out.

The whole debacle inflicts major financial losses on everyone, and a blow on the head for Acme’s tested work ethics.

Scenario 2:

Alec approaches a relatively inexperienced firm, The Upstarts, a young group of web solution experts. What draws him to them is their willingness to listen to him pour his heart out, allowing him to understand and define his idea even better.

“We’ll see it through in a month , Sir, and we’d like you to be in constant touch with us till we have it ready”. “Okay, that sounds fine” says Alec. “Infact I like it”.

Work at The Upstarts proceeds with gusto, with their small team of developers, designers, managers, technical writers and testers working simultaneously. What Alec notices surprises him. Instead of going for the whole idea at once, The Upstarts fragment his brainchild into small chunks. “We like it small”, they wink. They all sit together, with Alec in the middle, each one voicing his opinions and ideas, until everyone present knows precisely what is wanted and which way the spurt of action is to be directed.

This goes on everyday, with the testers rounding up each day’s produce with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Thumbs up, they hit the next chunk. Thumbs down, The Upstarts dash back to the drawing board. Finally, with a lot of re-working and intuitive improvisation, the whole project is pieced together, chunk by perfected chunk falling into place. On D-Day, exactly one-month from the start, the project is complete and comes out sparkling. It works flawlessly.

Alec comes up to his boss smelling like roses. Firm A has got its money’s worth (and how !), and hits industry folklore for revolutionizing client management. Needless to say, Alec does not remain a sprog in the firm for much longer.

For all you lesser mortals who haven’t already figured out what made The Upstarts beat Acme, it’s a dynamic web development approach called Agile Web Development.

What makes Agile web development successful is the way it goes about a project. Here are the aspects:

1) Manageable chunks: Agile web development breaks a project into fragments, each small but essential, and works on its every aspect, from designing to development to de-bugging to documentation, until it is fail safe and ready to be a part of the big picture.

2) Multiple Iterations: Each fragment is taken through multiple test sequences to make sure it is fault free. Every time a fault is encountered, it is re-worked, its guidelines altered, and its process of development re-visited to make sure it is improved upon.

3) Constant Interaction with the source: Having the originator of the idea in the loop at all times enables the developers to make sure their progress meets his approval and is headed in the way he’d want it to. This eliminates any last minute surprises and blame gaming, which could potentially cripple a project at the very last stage and ruin weeks of effort.

4) Extreme Flexibility: Rather than walking along a fixed path of pre-agreed steps, the key to Agile Web Development is its constant leeway to improvisation as and when needed. This effectively takes into account any sudden changes that might have to be incorporated into the scheme of things. Without this, crippling setbacks are an ever present threat.

Having arrived on the scenes almost a decade ago in the mid 1990s, Agile web Development has had its fair share of followers who swear by its practicality and resilience. Some of the well known Agile Software Development methods are :

i) Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
ii) Feature Driven Development (FDD)
iii) Agile Unified Process (AUP)
iv) Extreme Programming (XP)
v) Scrum

Criticism about Agile:

Puritans have nonetheless greeted Agile gruffly. Agile for them is equivalent to “Cowboy Coding”, signifying a lack of discipline, and the absence of a systematic, well defined approach to possibly complex assignments. Many argue Agile to be unsuitable for large projects, calling its methodology too shaky to encompass all the aspects of a complex task on the go.

Also, Agile’s minimal documentation, made so by constant actual contact with the client, has also drawn flak.

Conclusion:

Whether arguments put up by skeptics are valid remains to be proved or proved otherwise. But for now, web development solutions have a radical tool to help them along. So as long as Agile delivers, the only complaining will be from the ones who don’t get the contracts.

Even though it would be prudent to define Web 3.0 in concise terms that exclude uncertainty, it is not possible as yet. Precisely because Web 3.0 is not a definite product or service, or even a spectrum that has structured guidelines.

However, what Web 3.0 essentially is, is the next step in the evolution of the World Wide Web from a mere depository of information on interconnected networks, to the point where that vast repository makes sense to the primary agents that access it, viz., software agents.

Comparison with previous versions:

The World Wide Web when first launched, was just an interface to access data stored on standalone terminals or servers. Web 2.0 (a term whose validity is often debated by industry faithfuls) came out as a phoenix out of the dot com bubble burst. It was purported to be the re-birth of the Internet. However, it only added upon established underlying principles of the World Wide Web (eg: HTML as a base and use of AJAX over and above that).

Even so, Web 2.0’s contribution to the World Wide Web is a slew of services aimed at facilitating collaboration and sharing between users. Most notable in that direction was the advent of social networking sites, blogs, audio/video posts, podcasts, wikis, IMs etc.

It has also seen the rise of powerful search engines that can rip into the guts of a page and extract relevant data. Except that there is a catch to it. Even the most powerful search tool needs the brains and thought process of a human to guide it to the right page, or load it with a generous dose of keywords to empower it to come up with the intended results.

Web 3.0, on the other hand, aims to transfer that thought process directly to a search engine’s/software agent’s mode of operation. It aims at a World Wide Web where all data will be easily understandable by machines, like we humans presently do, thus ushering in the age of Intelligent Computing, and as an extension, Semantic Computing.

Benefits:

1) With Semantic computing as its soul and guiding light, Web 3.0 will open up the astronomical amount of data on the web to intelligent analysis.

E.g.: Let’s suppose that Eric, 22, wants to touch base with an old friend of his, Tracy. The problem is, they were both 8 years old when Tracy left their hometown of Auckland for Geneva. Having lost contact with her after that, Eric is not even sure if she is still there or if she has moved to another country. All he now knows is her age, her last name and the name of her mother, the name of the school they both went to and the year she left for Geneva.

A contemporary search engine employed for the task of looking up Tracy would probably draw a nil if Tarcy’s present information is not explicitly mentioned. Not because it does not have enough data to search with, but because it does not have the inherent capability of putting all of that data to intelligent use. However with Web 3.0, a search tool would co-relate all the data it digs up from school records, family names, immigration records and national/international travel logs, analyze and sift through the promising ones, and hit upon the one trail that will lead it to Tracy, through a maze of seemingly unrelated web content.

2) The second benefit, derived from the first, would be the possibility of delegation of the responsibilities of data searching and collating and analysis to computers themselves. This would leave humans to focus on the big picture, while the data and its logistics will be silently controlled by machines under constant interaction with each other.

3) It would also enable machines operating on and from different databases and platforms to successfully exchange information with one another, primarily because of the underlying artificial intelligence now possible with Web 3.0

4) Automation, as we know it today, is really a series of planned codes that machines are programmed to follow. But with semantical computing, computers will actually be able to take most simple decisions for themselves, and even complex ones if so possible, making commonplace human intervention redundant.

Limitations:

Industry watchers however, are skeptical. Their prime areas of skepticism are based on the following:

1) It is argued that it would be time -consuming for content to be published in two formats: one for humans and the second for machines. Unless a method is devised to automatically generate machine-friendly data formats, this concern is valid and critical.

2) Invasion of privacy and censorship : With an artificially intelligent Web, data creation/modification could easily be traced back to the originator(eg. : tracing of bloggers and webmasters). This could potentially violate individual privacy and may even lead to forced censorship.

3) Although Web 3.0 sounds great and one would expect it to go mainstream soon, how realistic it would really be to expect intelligent behavior from machines, particularly considering the whims and fancies of human expectations, is doubtful, if not entirely impractical.

Conclusion:

With Web 3.0 a real possibility in the evolution of the World Wide Web, one can look forward to a new array of web services, characterized essentially by a degree of artificial intelligence. The fact that the mammoth data archive of the web would be open to analysis across various platforms, would make online services much more resourceful. What does that mean to the common netizen? Lesser exercising of his own intellect in data mining, collation and decision making. In other words, a much faster, intuitive and productive web experience.

Zend Framework is an open-source software framework for PHP5. It has a flexible architecture that lets you build interactive web applications and web services effortlessly. One of its strengths is the highly modular Model-View-Controller design, which makes the code more reusable and easier to maintain and lets you focus on the big picture. 

Model-view-controller is an architectural pattern used in software engineering. Complex computer applications present a large amount of data to the user. A developer often wishes to separate data (model) and user interface (view) concerns. This enables him to make changes to the user interface without affecting data handling, and reorganize data without changing the user interface. MVC solves this problem by introducing an intermediate component: the controller. The controller decouples data access and business logic from data presentation and user interaction.

Zend Framework has further enhanced PHP and improved its candidature for use within an enterprise environment. It aims to:

• Provide a repository of high quality components that are actively supported.
• Provide a complete system for developing web applications powered by PHP5.
• Don’t change the PHP - it’s already a great platform.
• Embrace collaboration and community to further advanced PHP5 programming.
• Positively contribute to the PHP 5 ecosystem and the PHP collaboration project.

Advantages of Zend Framework include:

§       MVC application framework - Zend Framework’s model-view-controller architecture provides an industry best practice for Web application development. It enables the separation of business logic from user interface design.

§       Database support- Access multiple brands of RDBMS via a database-independent object-oriented interface. Databases supported include IBM DB2, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

§       Internationalization - Zend Framework supports advanced yet simple solutions to develop PHP 5 Web applications for a global audience.

§       Web services - Use classes to publish and consume Web services and feeds in PHP.

§       Foundation Framework services - Zend Framework provides many other classes to make common application development tasks quick and easy. For example, solutions for email, sessions, authentication, logging, caching, filtering input, and others are included.

Built in the true PHP spirit, the Zend Framework delivers ease-of-use and powerful functionality. It implements best practices in connecting the application to databases and networks. And so, it frees the developer to concentrate on user interactions and the business logic behind them.

All in all, Zend Framework provides much required “face-lift” to PHP and facilitates powerful solutions for building modern, robust, and secure websites.

In our last communication we deliberated on the fundamentals of an effective landing page . While identification of the message based on the target audience is rudimentary to the development of the sales page, it is not all pervasive. There are other factors like page layout and its design, efficacy testing of the respective pages and their technical viability, which augment the marketing efforts and convert those eyeballs to sales.

The objective of each landing page is different, hence, each page merits specific promotional strategy. While the principles of promotion remain uniform, their application would need to be customized. To achieve that coveted edge over the competitors, and to ensure that the visitors do not leave the webpage prematurely, it would be pragmatic to consider the following points while developing the landing page:

Logical sequence of the page: The page should be so designed to ensure that the visitor does not need to navigate too much and the navigation is seamless integrated. Care should be taken to desist from using unneeded elements, such as links to other resources.. The endeavor should be to encourage the visitor to focus on the page and get them to complete the one action on which your landing page is focused.

Page Layout using heading, fonts and color: The aesthetic of the page is tantamount to the presentation of a culinary delight. Not only should it look good but be functional too. The colors should be chosen to be consonant with the theme of the page and should be restricted to three, including black. The fonts could be varied to highlight a particular message.

Length of the page and the details, therein: The length of the page is a function of the product / service, its value, and the duration of the post purchase period. It is an accepted criteria, that more costly an item is, or the more unique it is, the more content will be needed to influence the buying decision.

Use of Images and graphics: A picture is worth a thousand words is a cliché that has relevance in the context of the web page design. However, images should not be used only to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the page, as it may distract to the visitor. The images can be an effective tool to corroborate the message since they are remembered easily and are appealing to the eye. The text can be illustrated by the image, though its relevance and positioning are points, that should not be ignored. Further, it is recommended that the image be placed on the left of the text, since studies in eye tracking suggest that it takes more effort to move the eye back to the left.

Address the check out dissonance: It is imperative that anything that could cause the visitor to change their mind about the transaction, be adequately addressed. It is not uncommon for visitors to abandon shopping carts and forms at the last minute. This could be due to anxiety that stems from the uncertainty, post purchase. To address this point, there should be an effort to put the visitor at ease by ensuring that the sales process is reassuring from the beginning to the end. Reiterating the expected action through the entire process is another way this phenomenon can be arrested.

Also, it is always a good idea not to give the visitors a choice at this stage of the conversion funnel. Testimonials of satisfied clients, would further add to the credibility of the service/product, and help allay the fears of the visitor at the checkout page.

Search engine consideration: It is a well established fact that a well developed Search engine reduces the Cost of Acquisition (COA), by reducing the bounce rate.
A targeted landing page is the best candidate for being promoted on the search engines. The factor that works in its favor, is the relevance of the page to the target audience. Search engine spiders are known to favor landing pages that contain lots of good, keyword-rich test.
However, if the strategy is to create multiple landing pages with cosmetic changes in text, it is advisable that these pages are kept away from search engine spiders. In such circumstances, the general purpose landing page can be made available for indexing, while robots meta tag or robots.txt directive could be employed to exclude the others. This initiative ensures that the search engines don’t interpret this as spam because of duplicate content.
The mandatory test before the Launch: A 360 degree view of the effective landing page is incomplete without the mention of testing. Before the web page is launched, it is always a prudent exercise to test the efficacy of the respective web page. A functional tool for such analysis is the A/B testing methodology. This involves splitting traffic randomly between two pages that are identical except for the individual factor that is being tested. This test allows us the user to understand the variables that work in favor of the website, and the others that would not.

Review, Reform, Repeat: There should be continuous effort aimed to check the bounce rate and the click through rate in the website. It is always a good practice to periodically research the competitor’s web appearance, and analyze the change in target audience, and their behavior.

It is paramount to ascertain a lower bounce rate by keeping the website updated, by catering to the changing needs of the assorted users. The design and development of the landing page is not a one time effort, and needs continuous improvisation, depending on the changing market dynamics, and how the businesses evolves overtime. However, care should be taken that the intended theme of the webpage is not diluted.

The aforementioned points are intended to act as a guide in your crusade to develop that perfect landing page, and capture the interest of each visitor.

An effective sales plan involves prudent selection of the marketing tools complemented with the appropriate Search Engine. While these would catalyze the arrival of the visitors, it may not necessarily facilitate conversion of these visitors to a sale / sign up.

The visitors may arrive as a result of the marketing initiatives like pay per click ad, email marketing or simple keyword based organic search. Brevity and clarity of the message that is being communicated through the respective page, would ensure that the visitor performs the desired action. Further, the message should have enough call for action to persuade the visitor to initiate the appropriate action.

In Marketing parlance, while the marketing initiatives may bring the horse to the well, it may not be adequate to make it drink. The well should be appealing to galvanize the swig!!

Determine the objective of the Landing Page: While designing the landing page, it becomes imperative to identify the objective, that is expected to be achieved through the landing page. A landing page is required to be a highly focused web page. It may be designed to achieve any of the following objectives:

Sell a product.
Provide Contact Information.
Promote a service or an idea.

The landing page demands considerable effort and time, and should be developed after due introspection. Sending your viewer to the homepage is not always a good idea. Doing this would make the visitors search through the site for information proposed (through the email or pay per click link). Consequently, the visitor may leave the page out of dismay. It is always recommended that there should be ease of navigation for the visitor and the visit should be well orchestrated.

It is ideal to get the visitors to an attractive landing page, carefully crafted for the ad link. It should be in consonance with the brief ad copy, given in the email or the PPC link. PPC driven landing pages may be thematically organized for each keyword. Further it is suggested that the look and feel of the landing page is consistent with the email content, as it renders user experience, more fluent and persuasive.

Know the identity of the target audience: Landing pages may be used to target both B2C and B2B contacts, with each having their specific characteristics. While B2B customers seek detailed information, price range and testimonials to facilitate decision-making, B2C customers are more interested in brand names, price tags, discount rates, free offers and shipping charges.

For a B2B customer, the landing pages must establish a sense of reliability and quality for the company’s products and/ or services. Landing pages for B2C must be concise, quick to scan and focused on selling, rather than convincing. B2C pages must sport product pictures with exact price tags, preferably inclusive of shipping charges and other applicable taxes. Irrespective of the type of customer, there should be an attempt to provide a promise of privacy, and the policies of the company must be communicated succinctly.

Gather contact information – The immediate objective of a landing page may also be to obtain some ‘call of action’ for future follow up. It is essential to capture useful contact information of the visitor to facilitate follow-up. However, asking too many questions may irritate the visitor. Hence it is is a good practice to desist from collecting too much personal information. Just the relevant questions intended to elicit appropriate information is usually sufficient.

Technical considerations - Fast loading time of landing pages is absolutely essential to hold and capture the otherwise short attention span of the potential customers. In other words, the landing pages should be vivacious in every sense of the word. Hence, heavy flash images are usually not recommended.

Use of daughter windows is often recommended while opening new content, rather than overlapping information in the same window. This would ensure that even if the landing page takes the visitor to a third party link, the return can be easily accommodated.

Incorporating the aforementioned points while developing the landing page, would reduce the bounce rate of the respective page, and increase the chances of a closure. This would assist in achieving the Online marketing objectives. In other words, this would ensure that the horse drink from the well. Happy closures.

Web 2.0 outlines the latest version of World Wide Web - dynamic, highly scalable and organic in growth. The rampant popularity enjoyed by Web 2.0 design patterns has resulted into companies blindly including the buzzword among their highlight features. Following are the state-of-the-art web design and development patterns that may be looked up in full or in part to determine a Web 2.0 company:

(a) Harnesses the potency of small sites that form the majority of the web content. Web 2.0 reaches out to the masses wide and across Internet, generally utilizing algorithmic data management. For example, Googles AdSense indulges in dynamic content generation by placing least disturbing, context-sensitive and consumer friendly text ads across exhaustive Web Pages possible. Likewise, eBay acts as an automatic intermediary between even highly small-scale single individuals dealing in few dollars. BitTorrent renders every client a server that empowers its network to provide both bandwidth and data. As a result, files that are more popular take relatively less time to download.

(b) Sports forte in handling a specialized and distinctive database. Be it Google or Yahoo or Amazon, all offer specialized database services that lends them an unbeatable niche. Web 2.0 applications are not merely collection of software tools, but applications collecting and managing unique and large-scale data.

(c) Encourages user participation to add value. The highlight of Web 2.0 design is that it is empowered by collective brainpower. For example, Google PageRank is based on the number of links (outsider votes) garnered by a website. Amazon outdoes competition by inviting extensive user participation in various ways, including reviews and ratings. Wikipedia grows organically as it allows any web user to add content to be collectively edited and proofread. Open source software projects may be found on certain sites that let users copy/ add code for mutual advantage.

(d) Builds vital database using a natural architecture of participation. Web 2.0 architecture enhances intuitive networking by aiding selfish motives of the target users. It recommends setting inclusive defaults for assembling data gathered by day-to-day use of the application. Like, Napster by design serves earlier downloaded music that helps user activity and builds valuable database naturally. Open source software projects like Linux, Apache, Perl, etc. also sport well-defined extension mechanism that empowers network growth in outer layers akin to onion.

(e) Keeps fewer restrictions in licenses. Web 2.0 design chooses in favor of least restrictive Intellectual property protection limits to harness benefits of collective adoption. In fact, it recommends scope for hackability and remixability.

(f) Improves continuously. Negating scheduled releases, Web 2.0 recommends continual and consistent upgrading in real-time, without disturbing existing services. The Web 2.0 companies, like Google and Yahoo, may be often spotted sporting Beta logo to mark ongoing development process and real-time monitoring of user behavior by restrictive implementation. They refine the new feature consistently based on feedback received, before its actual pervasive implementation.

(g) Offers syndication and lightweight programming models. Composed of a network of co-operating data services, Web 2.0 applications encourage web services interfaces and content syndication. They favor lightweight programming models that allow loosely coupled systems to the extent of fragility.

(h) Develops device-independent applications. Keeping in mind the scope and access of Internet beyond a personal computer, Web 2.0 design enables seamless incorporation of its services across various platforms, including mobile handsets, PCs and Internet servers.

While DoubleClick, belonging to the Web 1.0 era, recently claims over two thousand successful implementations of its software, Google AdSense, the child of Web 2.0 purely, has already crossed hundreds of thousands implementations. The radical success and growth witnessed by the truly Web 2.0 web designs indeed reinforce the relevance and far-reaching prospects of Web 2.0 catchphrase.

Launched by its developer JJ Allaire in 1995, ColdFusion has assumed tremendous popularity as a preferred programming platform for web development within a rather short span of time. From
JJ Allaire to Macromedia and now Adobe Systems in 2005, exchanging hands between brand names of repute speak about its viability and latent talent as a web development programming language and an application server. Statistics reveal its extensive deployment across the world in over ten thousand organizations, translating into over 1,20,0000 plus servers, including but not restricted to over 75% of the Fortune 100 companies.

To introduce, ColdFusion is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) language that facilitates quick creation of strong and compelling websites. As indicated earlier, ColdFusion is both an application server and a language. ColdFusion is built on a certified Java J2EE platform, rendering it fast, scalable and portable that in turn has amounted to its global popularity and prevalent use.

ColdFusion as a language is compatible with various application servers, including J2EE application servers, to be used on top of them as an alternative simplified (HTML like) scripting syntax. ColdFusion server also supports various web servers on different platforms. To quote a few examples, ColdFusion supports Apache, IIS and NSAPI based web servers and Solaris, HP-UX and Windows for platforms. ColdFusion also supports additional programming languages like server-side Actionscript.

Unlike PHP and ASP, ColdFusion is a commercial product that sports many integrated services not available otherwise. The attractive features of ColdFusion include business graphing, full text search and file upload handling utilities. ColdFusion also brilliantly incorporates Macromedia Flash, rendering it further ideal for web development. It is usually preferred among (data-driven) intranets worldwide.

Another highlight of ColdFusion is its capability to handle asynchronous events. ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition can handle events like SMS and instant messaging via its gateway interface, providing a web developer a dynamic tool in his/ her hands. Other exceptional value added services of ColdFusion include its capability to concert HTML to PDF, Graphic User Interface (GUI) widgets, database querying using ODBC or JDBC irrespective of the platform, client and server cache management, management of session, client and application et al.
Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 is the latest release of ColdFusion in the market at present. Awaited is the release of its version 8 in the second half of this year. As demonstrated at CFUnited 2006, MAX conferences and CFDevCon 2006 at UK, the future version will integrate with Adobe PDF forms, live Macromedia Breeze presentations and Microsoft .Net.

We have recently started upgrading the code for our company’s website from XHTML 1.0 Strict to SEO Semantic XHTML 1.0 Strict. The new code would help in the following ways:

• Reduce the file foot print making the pages lighter and further reducing the load times.
• Assist search engines in comprehending the right hierarchy in which the content is to be inferred.
• Reduce the ever-increasing server load and bandwidth consumption.
• Possibly, improve the search engine rankings.

Those who might be interested can view the new (under development) code at http://www.vinove.com/

Update: We have received several e-mails enquiring if we offer SEM Semantic XHTML Conversion - Yes, we indeed do! If you would like to know more, please get in touch with us now!

Finally - the much awaited update to Vinove’s web presence finally was done late night 6th January or very early morning, 7th - should I say?

A number of people have worked on it and it has taken more than just hard work to come up with what we have today.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for their hard work and inputs. At the same time, I would like to congratulate fellow Vinovians on getting a shiny new standards compliant web presence