Design, layout & content

There is an amazing complexity in the front end of a website (see, for example, Development). In this page we list a few of our in-house skills. If you don't see what you want, ask. We probably have someone who is an expert.

Content. Before we launch into the really techie stuff, let us mention that our people include best-selling published authors, scriptwriters, and copywriters – as well as professional typesetters, editors and proofreaders. If you or your clients need help producing or editing the content, ask us first.

Mark-up. Unless you instruct us otherwise, we currently develop standard websites to Transitional XHTML Version 1.0 with exceptions as authorized by the Cyber-dynamics Standards Committee (we sometimes have to make exceptions, because your clients want websites that work in the major browsers currently in use). This is a shifting target – but at least HTML is now obsolescent. For data exchange and ecommerce we use XML and variants as appropriate (see also WAP, J2ME, etc).

Cascading Style Sheets. In accordance with the XHTML standards, we use external cascading style sheets (CSS). This helps with maintenance of the sites. Many clients change their product brochures annually and external CSS makes it easier to maintain and update the sites.

Graphics. We can provide stock or custom photography and artwork, or enhance supplied images (our creative people range from fine arts graduates to cartoonists). We can apply almost any special effects. For development, we use industry-standard tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator; for end use we optimize using GIF, JPEG and other formats as appropriate.

Multimedia. We supply stock and custom audio and video; and we generally use Macromedia Flash and animated GIFs as appropriate for special effects. We work in all the major formats including Multimedia Experts Group (mpg/mpeg), Windows audio (wav) and video (wmv), active streaming format (asf), interleaved audio and video (avi), Apple Quicktime (qt), and RealPlayer (rm).