The technology sector has seen its woes continue throughout 2002. Especially hard hit has been the Internet sectors. The good news, I've started seeing what I believe is the turn-around in the Internet and web development segment. While it's impossible to pinpoint a specific item that has allowed me to form this opinion, what I have seen is that more and more large companies are looking into upgrading or enhancing their Internet and web technologies. It appears that they are now again ready to invest in this technology and move away from the status quo.
Fortunately, companies are being more cautious and frugal with their investment in the Internet. Why is this good? By being cautious and frugal, companies are going to make the right decision and look for a positive return on investment (ROI). This means, no more artificial bubbles and the implementation of technology that will work and which will stimulate steady growth within the industry.
Let's hope that the signs I've been seeing are real and lead to new investment in Internet technologies.
The use of the Internet continues to grow world wide despite the slowdown in new investment in Internet technologies and web development. The recently released numbers of Internet usage around the world by the United Nations (see http://itworld.ca/rpb.cfm?v=20023290002) supports what I've been saying for years. Growth potential for Internet doesn't lie within North America, but elsewhere. While North America continues to lead, countries like India are on the road to catching up and passing us. For example, in India, Internet access grew by 27.3 over 2001. Usage is currently at 1 in 147 of the Indian population or 7 million people. Remember, this is only 0.7 percent of the entire Indian population. There are over 1 billion people living in India and as the technology becomes more obtainable, India would only require a penetration rate of less than 10% to reach 100 million users and become one of the largest demographic groups the Internet.
In my last communiqué, I talked about the move by the W3 to get all web developer coding to standards. The push is alive and well and many developers and software companies have picked up the call and started implementing these guidelines.
My company K'nechtology Inc. has now adopted a policy of not developing any new web sites that do not follow the W3 recommendations and that do not validate against the W3's validator (validator.w3.org). I don't recommend that every web site be built to the latest standard of Strict XHTML or even the earlier transitional XHTML, one can still build standard compliant web sites to the HTML 4.01 standard that works equally well in nonstandard compliant browsers. To learn more on XHTML and standards please read my columns in Computer World Canada.
XHTML is the future and The dollars and sense of building to standards
If you're interested in obtaining a book about the latest XHTML standards, I highly recommend Molly Holzschlag's Special Edition Using XHTML. Not only does this book contain great detail and information on coding web sites to these standards, it is the only one to my knowledge that contains a chapter on coding to accommodate the issues of multilingualism and gobalisation.
If you're interested in ordering this book on-line you can order through: amazon.com in the USA and Chapters.Indigo.ca in Canada by following the below links.
Order Special Edition Using XHTML from Chapters.Indigo.ca (Canada) or Amazon.com (USA).
Back in September, I participated in Web Builder 2002. The good news is that I and panel of experts had a great time deconstructing web sites (reviewing web sites) that the attendees had submitted. This live unrehearsed event has been the highlight of past conferences and this year was no exception. The irony to come out of this year's was that the favorite site of all panelists was a hobbyist's site that was built with very low technology. The consensus was that this site looked the way its users would appreciate and the humor contained within the content of the site was perfect for its audience. The moral was that while this site was reviewed against sites from major corporations, universities and government agencies, it wasn't the technology behind it that made it successful; it was the human touch and the knowledge of its audience that made it a winner.
At the conference, I was also asked to be the Guest MC for a panel discussion on Content Management Systems (CMS). I had the opportunity to confront various experts not only on the need for CMS, but the types, methodologies and options available for a successful implementation of a CMS. To summarize this session in a line or less, is that there are now fewer options available then a few years ago (many vendors are no more), but the price range is still all over the place and that there is no one single solution perfect for everyone.
The sad news out of the conference was that this may be the last Web Builder conference. The organizers feel that due to drops in attendance over the years that people don't want an all encompassing conference any more and instead prefer specialized conferences. While I disagree with this view point, the numbers speak for themselves.
Over the past few months, K'nechtology has been on the go. We've completed our review of Adobe's GoLive X (see below) and signed on as strategic advisors to two organizations, New Home Buyers Network (NHBN) and Mesh Innovations.
NHBN operates a series of web sites targeted new home buyers. The primary site operated in conjunction with Toronto Star is Newinhomes.com, and is the largest site of its kind in Canada with accesses to new residential developments by over 150 builders.
Mesh Innovations (www.meshinnovations.com) is a relatively young company, founded by individuals with years of experience in Internet and other technologies development. Mesh has taken up my mantra of think globally when it comes to web development by specializing in the development and implementation of business-critical Internet solutions with a particular focus on globalization issues.
My company K'nechtology Inc. has been evaluating a variety of software packages over the past few months. Here's what we've liked.
K'nechtology has completed its review of Adobe's "GoLive" (version 6.0). For any professional web developers who had tried earlier versions of GoLive, forget everything you ever thought of this tool. Version 6 is a completely new tool and has features that can go head to head with Macromedia's Dreamweaver.
We found this tool extremely complex, and not appropriate for the amature web developer. The use of a great selection of templates does make it easy to get started for a novice developer, but very quickly you can get lost.
So who's this tool for? If you're a web developer who relies heavily on graphics and spends most of your time in Photoshop or Illustrator, this product is for you. One feature we loved was the ability to directly place Photoshop or Illustrator files directly in the development web page. This feature allows the user to keep a direct link to the original graphic and with a simple double click; the original graphic is opened up in the appropriate program ready for edit. Make your changes, save your file and it's there already updated in GoLive. Once you're ready to publish your site, GoLive will do the image rendering into the appropriate JPEG file.
GoLive also supports dynamic sites. During our tests we used PHP to generate dynamic content. By selecting the page preview, we were able to see the results of the PHP programming without have to publish the page to a web server.
Who's the product not for? If you're a web developer who spends most of their time looking at the code, then you might not want to use this product as their HTML text editor leaves a lot to be desire.
What we found pleasantly surprising is built-in support for XTHML. While it didn't support Strict XHTML, it did properly support Transitional XHTML. Also, surprising was a built-in code validator. This tool was extremely useful in validating the code generated by GoLive and any hand coded content. Unfortunately some pages that passed GoLive's validator failed when validated at on the W3 validtor. Despite this drawback, the tool did allow for most major errors to be spotted and corrected during the coding process thereby reducing development time.
All in all, we are happy with this tool as most of its features compete well with similarly priced products. We recommend it to all those Adobecentric web developers.
In the last Communiqué, I reviewed Mach5 Mailer. Since this review, Mach5 has come out with an updated version (version 3.1). This new version (which still hasn't been tested) proclaims to have resolved several short comings that I mentioned to those who asked for more information. The biggest issue was the inability to send HTML and plain text e-mails to together. Now you no-longer need to maintain separate lists, instead it will send out intelligent e-mails that will display according to the limitation of the users e-mail reader.
Mach5 hasn't increased their price. So now you get even more features for the same $99.95 USD. Those who've purchased an earlier version can upgrade for $49.95 USD
Mach5 has also just released an enhanced product called Mailer 3 Gold. From the description, it promises to be a superior product, targeted to companies who need to integrate their outbound e-mail campaigns with internal databases through the use of various scripting languages for dynamic e-mails.
The retail cost for Mailer 3 Gold is $249.95 USD. Those who have purchased Mailer 2 can upgrade for $159.95 USD.
To download a free evaluation of Mach 5 or to order your own copy, visit Mach5.com.
SAVE 10% off Mailer - K'nechtology Inc. is offering a 10% discount on your purchase of the Mach 5 Mailer (both regular and gold). To obtain this discount enter the promotional code "knechtology" when placing your order.
I hope you've enjoyed this newsletter and please forward it to anyone you think might enjoy reading it. If you were forward a copy of this newsletter and would like to subscribe to future issues, please visit http://www.knechtology.com/news/subscribe.html and subscribe.
If you would like to read more of my past columns and article be sure to visit my web page which contains links to the past several years of columns and features.
For more information on any of the topics or products referenced, please feel free to contact me directly at answers@knechtology.com. Just to remind you that my services and the services of K'nechtology Inc. are always available to help you with your technology strategies, IT project management and Internet/web development needs and software reviews.
