Before 1995, very few people knew what web applications were. Of course, there was an excellent reason for that: very few web applications had been developed up to that point. Websites were becoming popular, but had not developed into the huge market which they comprise today. For discussion purposes, the primary difference between a web site (collection of files in support of a common theme, idea or product) and a web application (web-based data collection and processing tool) is one of complexity. Some popular websites (Amazon and eBay for example) can be seen as a combination of a traditional website and multiple web applications.

Until the advent of the internet, most applications were written to run on local computers and required that the applications be installed for each computer separately (for example, Adobe Photoshop). Or, in those cases where the application was hosted (run from) another computer, often called a server, one still had to install the client application (for example, Microsoft Outlook) on the local computer that would access and run the server-installed application (for example, Microsoft Exchange Server). For this reason, we often hear this traditional type of application referred to as a client-server application (or sometimes simply a desktop application).

Today's web applications take the client-server concept and re-purpose it. We still use clients, but now the client is the browser (usually Internet Explorer or Firefox). We no longer need to install every application on the local machine. Instead, once the browser is installed, we may use it to browse files on our own computer, millions of publicly-available websites and as many web applications as we have access to.

This is not to say that all of the old client-server applications have gone away. Indeed, we've not so much lost the desktop applications as we have built on the foundations which they have provided. One example of this is Microsoft's Outlook Web Access (usually called OWA). This web application allows a user to view his/her email via any standard browser. This means that the user does not need to be logged into his/her computer with Outlook open to work with email. OWA has been around several years, but it has matured to the point where it is almost as full-featured as the standard Microsoft Outlook client.

In other words, web applications are becoming increasingly able to support the types of tasks that we once thought were the realm of the desktop application. If we consider the usefulness of tools such as Google Apps and even ThinkFree, these changes cannot be ignored.

Ever since March 1991,when the inventor of the World Wide Web shared his browser application with a group of colleagues, software developers have been trying to make web browsers do just about everything.

One of the regular challenges for Omnitech comes from making sure our code works properly on different browsers, since each browser may interpret code differently. These differences can become critical when we are working with a website or web application which will be used by members of the general public, because we don’t know exactly which browser someone might be using to view the website or web application.

To help us determine where we need to spend some of our development effort, we can get a pretty good idea of what percentage of users are using a given browser. As of the latest numbers from one source that keeps track of this, the top three browsers (all versions) had the following November 2007 market shares:

Internet Explorer 77.35%
Firefox 16.01%
Safari 5.14%

Internet Explorer 4 0.01%
Internet Explorer 5.0 0.14%
Internet Explorer 5.5 0.13%
Internet Explorer 6 40.24%
Internet Explorer 7 36.84%

Well, the new site has been up for a week now and so far the feedback has been positive. We here at Omnitech are as excited to present our work as we are to hear what you think about it. That being said, thank you for your opinions; please continue to voice them. The new site has been in progress for awhile. There was a conscious attempt to maintain a similar functionality to the old site while presenting a visual evolution. Although we were proud of our previous site, it felt like it was time to move away from the web 2.0 aqua look. As a fan of darker designs, I began playing with the idea of subtle shadow and lighting effects in Photoshop. The light bulbs that can be seen on the site originally were utilized as advertisements in the Sioux Falls Business Journal and they seemed to fit the aforementioned approach. Knowing that not everyone is as big of a fan of dark layouts, I also created a light version of the site to present to management. Since a big part of Omnitech's business approach is presenting our clients with different 'flavors' to choose from, both the dark and light designs were selected.

The further progress that was made with the look of the site, the more technologies I was excited to plug in. You may have noticed the fun content transitions when clicking through the menu. These animations were made possible by moo.fx, a lightweight open-source javascript effects library. We also took advantage of another open-source effects tool known as Lytebox. Lytebox is a trimmed-down version of the popular Lightbox.js created by Lokesh Dhakar. Using Lytebox not only allowed us to present images in a dynamic visual manner, it also presented us with full html content support that can be seen on our work examples and career opportunities. In the end I would say we are extremely pleased with the results. It was a blast working on the site and it both looks and functions exactly as we intended. Thanks for stopping by!