Features

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Web Site Features

Text

Ease of Navigation

Images

Java and CGI Scripts

Animated.gif

Tips

Backgrounds and Frames

Text

Text is the most basic and important way of conveying your ideas to others on the Web. This "plain" media can be fully customized with the upcoming additions and advancements in font embedding. This will allow any TrueType, PostScript, or the new Open Type font styles to be displayed in your site.

Ease of Navigation

The ease of navigation through a multi-page site is essential for its clarity and success. Frames create multiple windows that can seamlessly present several pages and images at once. Navigation bars with fully customized buttons help produce an organized layout and attractive look of a professional web site.

Images

Images are becoming more and more an integral part of web sites on the Internet today as higher bandwidth modems are used by more people. Your own images and photographs can be placed in your web site if you have them in digital format or processed photos can be scanned in.

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Java and CGI scripts

Java and CGI scripts are some of the hottest things on the web today. These programs increase the interactivity of your web site by allowing navigation buttons to change when you click on them, include scrolling text, on-line shopping carts, site hit counters, and a huge amount of other options. Son Bear can provide you with anything that you need to spice up your site

Not only can you place information on the Internet, but you can also receive responses from the public who visit your site. They can be made for:

Information requests: answer questions that others may have.
Product ordering: expand your mail-order capabilities worldwide!
Applications for employment.
Guest books and user feedback.

Animated .gif

Animated GIF files are effective ways of drawing attention to your site with motion. Text marquees, advertisement banners, rotating or flashing icons, and 3D logo and title animations can be produced by Son Bear.

Exampes:

If animations don't suit your needs, you can take the multimedia aspect of your web site further with embedded AVI, QuickTime, and MPEG video. Background music, demos, or sound bites can be included in your site in MIDI format or with higher quality streaming audio.

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Tips

Ensuring browser compatibility - Web sites are around a mark-up language called HTML, which tells a browser how to display the page. The problem is that browsers can interpret this language in different ways, which leads to badly designed sites looking fine in one browser, but quite abysmal in another. New versions of the two most widely used browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) are capable of technologies which weren't around when the earlier versions of the browsers were introduced. The consequence is that if pages are designed with the new technologies then they will be rendered poorly (or not at all) on old browsers unless multiple versions of the page are made to support the separate browsers. We ensure browser compatibility down to version 3 of both Internet Explorer and Navigator.
Width-strapping - The content of our web sites are width-strapped to 620 pixels to ensure that it is rendered in the same way on all screens. If this was not done then those viewing our sites on 640x480 resolution would have to scroll vertically to see the full picture. Width strapping also ensures that people viewing the site on higher resolutions will not have to read text which runs the full width of the page and are instead presented with more easily readable columns - such as used in newspapers.
Optimising search engine rankings - Many web designers will simply design a site which 'looks good' but ranks poorly in search engines. When using search engines people look for keywords and are given a list of usually ten sites which rank highest under those keywords. Extensive research and testing has taught us that getting the sites ranked highly takes more than just submitting a site - and that the process originates at the site's design and structure. For example, whenever possible we strive to do away with frame based sites as they result in lower rankings.
Reducing download times - It is quite infuriating to have to wait several minutes in order to be able to view a page - and often if the wait is too long then people are prone to give up and go elsewhere instead. For that reason it is critical that we design sites which can be viewed in just a few seconds, but still exhibit "pizzazz". To do this we reduce the number of colors in graphics and ensure that they're saved in the most appropriate file format.
Effective use of new and advanced technologies - As mentioned earlier, new technologies are not necessarily supported by all browsers and so the including them is not always the best idea. We can design sites using many new technologies such as CSS, DHTML, Sound (.wav), Video, JavaScript and Flash - but we recommend not relying on them too heavily, or not at all. As time progresses, the percentage of people who can view the technologies which are new today will increase, and so we will happily include them as standard.

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Backgrounds and Frames

Tactful transparent backgrounds are the Son Bear trademark. Tactful backgrounds are an effective medium that makes your web page a pleasure to visit. Visit www.cocettiwines.com to see an excellent example of the use of backgrounds. Frames can also be used on your web site. Frames are separate windows on one page designed to keep your table of context and navigation buttons in view, while another frame or window changes at you request. Frames can be simple or complex and if used in conjunction with backgrounds your site will draw attention and repeat costumers.

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