Meadowlark: Sheffield based computer consultancy

Software tools we use:

Active Server Pages (ASP)

Active server pages are a microsoft language based around VBScript (no, not like javaScript or Visual Basic) that, like all web based scripting languages, is a means of presenting dynamic content (usually database content) to a web page. Meadowlark have used ASP to produce web based content management systems.

Advantages of ASP

The advantages of ASP are also those of any scripting language; that of presenting dynamic content on what is essentially a static presentation technology; HTML.

ASP makes possible the dynamic generation of HTML pages on demand from the user. Typically the user is presented with a form where search criteria are specified, the search is submitted, an ASP page is called, and this responds to the request by querying a database, and generating an HTML page that is sent back to the user.

By using just HTML to generate dynamic content, the device used to received this content need only be able to run a web browser, and this is becoming ubiquitous, even on phones.

What you can expect from computer hardware in the future?

1. Smaller faster, cheaper, lighter computers for the desktop.  They will be no larger than a DVD drive.  They will be silent, and run free software, and much of this will be web based.  They will use solid state disks, and large quantities of cheap memory.

2. More powerful mobile phones will largely replace traditional PCs.  The screens of mobiles will occupy as much of the phone as physicallly possible.  "Soft buttons will have largely replaced mechanical buttons in top of the range phones.

3. Sophisticated screen display technology will be available that will allow us to use bigger computer monitors in smaller less likely workplaces.

4. Micro-factories: places of work no bigger than a loft extension, where budding entrepreneurs labour in their free time "printing" products with 3D printers and selling their wares by the internet.