Web Development
Web Standards
- Is your current web development company a bottleneck?
- Are you concerned about the cost of maintaining a web site?
- Does the idea of easily and rapidly changing your site to provide a competitive advantage appeal to you?
- Do you want to be able to seamlessly integrate emerging technologies?
- Are you interested in maximizing the number of people who can use your site?
- Are you attracted to improving your visibility to search engines like Google and Yahoo?
- Did you know that the blind are able to use the web?
- Would you like to decrease your exposure to Lawsuits filed under the ADA?
The answer to all of these issues is web standards. Web standards improve visibility to search engines, improve cross browser comparability, decrease download times, decrease cost of ownership, and reduce legal exposure. We pay strict attention to web standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is a world wide organization established to improve the World Wide Web and has become the controlling body for such web standards as HTML, CSS. These standards are constantly evolving because of innovations like AJAX. Russell Computer Consulting makes it a top priority to keep up with the changes, and when finalized, integrate them into our work.
Accessibility
Improving ability of the handicapped to use the web is an important movement in the world of web development and is likely to become more so. This may be surprising for some but it is possible for the blind to browse the web using adaptive technologies.
Following this link will allow you to get an idea of how the the blind see my home page. Links are handled in different ways by different products. In the tool I used for this recording they are denoted by ] in the recording followed by a list of references at the end of the recording lists the links in the order of their appearance in the document.
There is a portion of the World Wide Web Consortium called the Web Accessibility Initiative(WAI) dedicated to make the web handicapped friendly. The WAI has created a document called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The WCAG forces one to look at unexpected issues like color choice, and flashing content. Red on Green is not visible to the color blind, flashing content may trigger an epileptic attack. The US and California State government is also aware of these issues and has required that all sites must standards meet standards specified in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. We have made a study of WCAG and can help you in meeting the guidelines.
Web Applications
We can use a number of both client and server side technologies to create data driven dynamic content. This allows you to customize your site for an individual customer by tracking customer activity while shopping at your site. Keep your online catalog constantly current by connecting inventory database. Ask questions and take action base upon the answers. It is now possible to provide a user experience on the web as rich as traditional desktop based applications
Search Engine Optimization
The most important thing in any site is being found. Getting the search engines to find you is both a science and an art. Nobody will be able to guarantee that they can get you to place number one in the search engine result pages but there are many things that can be done to improve your position. We have access to many tools to aid in keyword selection, check your keyword density and evaluate the results of any changes that you make.
Software Development
I am a strong believer in software engineering. No matter what the project you need to do planning. Many thing need to be considered. What is the purpose the software is supposed to fulfill? Who are the stakeholders, What data do you need to track? What is the estimated time complete the project. These are all questions that have to be answered. Getting this wrong could mean redoing parts of your software. Software Engineering is about getting the answers to those questions right. Software engineering is in large part the study of the Software Life Cycle.
The software life cycle is gathering requirements, designing a solution, implementing the solution, testing, operation, finally ending the use of that product and transferring to something else. Each of these areas are important and books have been written covering just one aspect. There are people who get almost religious about how one should approach this and others you pay it no mind at all. To us the main thing is get the job done but do it in a sustainable way.
There is a wide range of accepted practices. These practice vary upon the team and the project. Some like Agile development are very informal produce less documentation but in the right environment produce software extremely quickly. The agile techniques adapt readily to changing requirements. On the other end of the spectrum is procedural methods like the IEEE standard. IEEE completely documents the project through each cycle and is purposely very redundant. In procedural environments it is important to get the requirements right early on because a change in requirements can be a major disruption. Procedural methods are very formal. Although there are many techniques the one you should use depends upon the project and the team you have. We have experiance in both environments and will use the one most appropriate to the conditions found.
Education
We can train your staff in Web Standards compliance, Web accessibility, and many software applications.
Open Source Solutions
We can help you find and deploy many open source alternatives to business software like Oracle, Microsoft Office, and Photoshop
