Application Features

All our application share common code to give the following basic building blocks.

• Developed with xHTML / CSS and validate according to the W3C standards
  
• Use CSS to create printable versions of each page automatically. There is no need for separate 'printer-friendly' pages.
• Reports are shown on screen and CSS used to format them. Lists can also be exported as a spreadsheet.
  
• A template-based approach is used to split application functionality from design. This makes it easy to fit dynamic screens into the look-and-feel of the rest of the site and to mark hotspots (such as an introductory paragraph) which can be altered by an administrator at a later stage.
  
• All our applications are designed to work with Javascript switched off. This makes them more accessible and work better on mobile devices. It also ensures they are crawled correctly by search engines. Example
  
• Applications screens are designed from the start to cope with large volumes of data. All lists have navigation buttons for several pages and can be filtered or sorted as appropriate.
  
• The same form validation is done in both Javascript and on the server. If Javascript is turned off then the application can still be used and the same checks will take place.
  
• Form fields are made more usable by restricting field sizes according to the data they allow, capitalising text if appropriate and using keyboard shortcuts to enter dates
• It is not possible to submit forms twice only unless you mean to.
• A three-tier architecture is used to separate user interface, business logic and database connectivity. This makes applications more robust.
  
• Applications only use one cookie and all state is stored on the server. Applications will run with cookies turned off, but users will not be able to log in.
• Our applications are aware of common pitfalls