Techiques
We are using up-to-date technologies in our work. They allow us to make nice modern sites. They are going to look fine even without update for quite a long time.
Design technologies
Adobe Photoshop - the most powerful for today bitmapped graphics editor programme. Helps to do high-quality photomontage and original pictures. Indispensable while digital processing and optimisation of photos before laying out on the Internet.
Corel Draw & Adobe Illustrator - vector graphic editor. Good for designing geometric figures, texts and other geometrical.
Macromedia Flash - vector animation editor for Internet. Helps to create dynamic web-applications.
Make-up technologies
Dynamic HTML. The basic idea of the dynamic HTML can be put in a very simple way: the way to change each and every element of a web-page. This gives an opportunity to make pages more vivid and interactive.
CSS - cascade of styles. The technology allows to describe once the basic elements of your site (the style) and then each time you'll need an element of the style, just to put its name. The technology allows to reduce the size of pages due to exclusion of unneeded repetition of similar elements.
SSI - Server Site Include. Many html-pages contain similar elements, like, for instance, the menu. In the usual html make-up a menu is simply inserted into each html-page. This causes many inconveniences. First, should you want to add another menu option, you'll have to update all the pages of your site - 20, 50, 100 or more. Second, this increases the volume consumed on the hard drive. And here the SSI comes to rescue. SSI helps to take out all the repeated elements of an html-page into a separate file. It is sufficient to note in the main document that the programme should include an element form another file. With ssi it is also easy to integrate into the page dynamic sgi scripts or changing banners. Thus, the content of the page will change each time when it is being visited.
Web-programming technologies
In order to make an interactive site it is not enough to make an html-page. One need scripts. Experts normally distinguish between several web-programming languages, which are used to write scripts. It would not be correct to say that any of them is better, they are different and fits best certain tasks.
Java Script - the easiest (and the cheapest) of scripts. In its framework the programme is downloaded onto your PC and run under your browser. Fits best the on-line calculators, minor dynamic elements (clock, date etc.)
Advantages - downloaded onto user's PC, can be run off-line. Does not require expensive hosting tariff plan.
Weaknesses - not supported by IE 3.0, Netscape 3 browsers (and lower). Yet computers using those browsers are hard to find (1-2%).
Perl-Cgi. Under ¦erl you can write scripts processed on server, not on user's PC. For instance, it is applied in mailing via site, in rating systems, chats, forums, counters, voting system etc..
Advantages - using Perl one can attempt on any task (unlike with Java Script, which fits only the simple tasks, script are run on server, therefore, the page can be viewed from any, even the oldest browsers).
Weaknesses - Perl-programming and installation of scripts on server is a quite labour-consuming process and therefore the price is high. One would also need a more expensive hosting tariff plan.
PHP & MySQL
PHP - a language resembling perl, a bit more simple, a bit slower. Run on server, used even for small applications working with databases. Best fits Internet-shops, databases, etc.
MySQL - relational database.
It is probably obvious what a database is. MySQl is a high-speed web-database for small tasks. This means - under 100 000 entries. It is appropriate to use a database in case of big quantities of data of one type, which needs sorting and search functions. Interfaces and scripts are best made under PHP, although one may also use Perl.