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Web Sites:
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PANDA Technologies
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PANDA Technology is a small business that sells and maintains a variety of telephony hardware and
software. Together, PANDA's owners and I created an internet strategy and a website concept to support
their sales and marketing.
The graphics are my design
and I wrote most of the copy. I implemented all the HTML, Flash, and JavaScript. The
photography is from stock shots and the vendors' press photos, which I modified for PANDA's needs.
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PandaCards
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When Panda's owners wanted an eCommerce site, they called on me again.
As before, I partnered with Panda's owners on strategy and concept, then wrote most of the copy,
co-designed the site's graphical look with the company's owners, and implemented all the software
and graphics. Further, I provided consulting to Panda to find and implement a
cost-effective credit card processing solution and web hosting provider.
After three years, Panda and I replaced this "interim" graphical design with a new skin from a
full-time graphical design team. Yet the underlying software that I originally wrote was
largely unchanged.
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My interim design:
Designer's re-design:
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America's Best Cleaners—
America's Best Cleaners old website was designed by a talented graphic artist who built the entire site
as one Flash animation.
However, as much as they enjoyed the beauty of the site, the owners of the America's Best Cleaners
association wanted a site that was more in keeping with traditional website design and value: easier
to maintain; responsive to a browser's <BACK> and <FORWARD> buttons, multiple pages
that could be bookmarked; etc.
I rewrote the site in HTML, Javascript, and PHP. The new site now:
- Retains the original graphic "look". Flash still introduces the site and decorates
each of the pages.
- Adheres to traditional website design
- All of the rapidly-changing information is database driven. The Locations and Sponsors
pages, especially, receive all of their content from information stored in a MySQL database
- Administrative pages provide complete control over the information in the database. A
programmer is not needed when Affiliates, Sponsors, or Newsletters need to be added, deleted,
or edited. Thus, a task that may have taken a programmer one hour to perform in the original
design can now be done, easily, in half that time by administrative staff.
- The PHP language is used to provide the Database connectivity and logic.
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Programming:
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Flash, ActionScript, and MySQL database
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The StarPuzzle demonstrates my ability to use Macromedia's Flash and ActionScript tools. I didn't
invent this puzzle, but the software and graphics are all my design. This "simple" puzzle:
- Uses a live MySQL database manage the sign-in information
- Counts the triangles; a non-trivial task of computing the intersections
of the lines and determining which lines form unique non-overlapping triangles.
- Small - only 71 Kbytes
- Highly portable - Running in 98% of the world's browsers
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Flash, ActionScript, and MySQL database
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The StarAnimal game demonstrates my ability to use Macromedia's Flash and ActionScript tools. This
is a simple "Guess the Animal" game that nevertheless is:
- Communicating with a live database to retrieve the animal information
- Fully Interactive
- Small - only 70 Kbytes
- Highly portable - Running in 98% of the world's browsers
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Java
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The Lifetime Clock demonstrates my ability to create and implement a web-based Java application,
albeit trivial.
NOTE: Despite Java's popularity, I cannot recommend it to business clients
who wish to use it for web-based programming, because Java Applets tend to be CPU intensive,
memory (RAM) intensive, and disk space intensive. This is in addition to the problem
of requiring each user have the correct version of the Java runtime libraries, and a modern enough
browser and PC/Mac to run Java. For comparison, Lifetime Clock is roughly the same size as StarAnimal
(70 Kbytes) but has far less functionality. Java has its place, but my experience shows me
that Flash is often a better solution for typical web-based applications.
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