Meadowlark: Sheffield based computer consultancy

Web Applications

Meadowlark have five years of experience of writing web applications. These are of various types.

• Forums (Where members post and share information on a particular topic).
• Information sites (Where the public can look up specialist information).
• Event management (Where users can advertise events and change their details as necessary).
• Publicity sites (Where a company publishes details of what they can do).

We use the most appropriate technology for the project. If the site has content that changes constantly we use a database as the store of the information and provide an efficient means of updating and editing this from a web form.

If the information changes often we may use XML.

If the site requires animation or a cutting edge user interface (this cannot be achieved easily with HTML alone) we may use Macromedia Flash and Actionscript.

If the number of concurrent users of the site is large and the data changes frequently, we may adopt an SQL database tuned for speed. If however there are few users we may adopt something less taxing of the hardware.

Web development tools, languages and technology we regularly use:

• Hypertext markup language (HTML)
• Cascading style sheets (CSS)
• Flash ActionScript
• Php
• VBScript
• Javascript
• XML
• Backend databases like mySQL, MSSQL, Access

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.