MY more personal "Blog" FAQS - Our Website > History
JIm's Ad Hoc "ramble" about CHROMTECH Website www.chromtech.net.au . . . yes it has been a long time ! . . . and literally it has been a real pain in the arse! . . .all the "foibles" of PCs . . . the Internet . . . >
ever on-going up-grading and debugging of Op Systems and software a la Windows etc
generally mixed with "scumbag" fraudsters, scammers, viruses etc
. . . blighted by the "tying-up" of Worldwide bandwidth by "nerds"
. . . with next to useless Facebook, Twitters . . . mobile phone "junkies"
AND Surely all THAT's a strong argument for a "decent" / secure independent business WWW system. Nevertheless > To improve things for you we have duplicated much of our highly detailed "Site info" . . .
www.chromtech-aus - a mobile friendly new Site
www.chromalytic.net.au - a mobile compatible heavily FlipHTML5 based page system ( this did include a complete functional SHOP Cart ( now discontinued with Pricing due to competitor siphonimg issues all to prevalent in All Shops particularly for us as a small business)
We have maintained partial Shop Cart(s) ( see miniSITE ) where our AUD Prices are somewhat up-to-date . . . as a guide and elsewhere see Shop2CT and www.chromtech-aus.com/shop/. . .
The "slooow" introduction of the NBN in Australia is and eventually will be useful.
IF and when it might appear in Boronia/Australia 3155 (Mid 2019 ?)
For internet users actually with NBN access the broad "concept of the web" is slowlythankfully reaching it's true potential !
ONLY hindered perhaps by archaic thinking by web administrators (Universities and large Corporates ) internally throttling download speeds for the sake of economics and bandwidth . . . arguably a lingering attempt to "dumb down" the populace.
Fortunately with the advent of Cloud Servers we've been able to bypass the "Turnbull" NBN by hosting Our Site(s) "in the Clouds" (USA) re Download speed at least ( our Server Our Server Upload speed is still chronically slow (~1Mbs) . . . but NOT Your problem! PDF > FipPAGE Web format has revolutionised web-publishing!
our 2019 Update
The "fallacy" of "Mickey Mouse" mobile webpage design being foisted on us is thankfully (but arguably perhaps) removed by the . . .
combination of FlipPAGEs ( and slow PDFs ) combined with "pinch&zoom" and "screen rotation" of more modern Mobile/Tablet devices into readable & print style A4 type PDF pages and surely comfortable with everyone
all in spite the "nerds" and their "dislexic" 2-syllable web, twittering mentality ( somewhat akin to the era of "Morse Code" )
NOW the brilliant screen presentation of "reasonable" mobiles ( eg Android Samsung A8* or Tablets Apple I-Pad2 or better ! )
WE have redesigned our Main Website www.chromtech.net.au from the original 1300px PC screen to 600px format www.chromtech.net.au/mobileA8.htm vastly simplifying the maintenance of both styles or web screen formats and avoiding the B...s..t of 3-400pix webpage design and kindergarten type readability
a REASONABLE & Innovative compromise " . .. We believe ! But we do cater for these with our 400px "mobile Site www.chromtech-aus.com which does in fact "auto adjusts to both mobiles and PC screen sizes. The latter can also be used with FlipPAGES ( auto-adjusts from the unreadable small screen of mobiles via "pinch&zoom" ! ) and even better with "Rotation Screen technology"
some of our Web History Our Intro to web design and the Internet started way back in 1992 wit old Bulletin Boards and CB Radio etc 14. . . beleive me before Telstra even new of the InternetAll Hack work Coding !
Much of our early page design was via hack coding or basic HTM editors . . . in hindsight absolute "crap" of course and nowadays very few would ever bother
Wysi-Wig and Page-layout software was primitive until about 1998 with the advent of Net Objects Fusion (NOF) which we still use to this day progressively updating right thru' version to current . . . NOF15 (2016 and waiting . . . ) but most of it patchwork and virtually obsolete ! much of it proves still to be junk ! The unique brilliant feature is the heirarchal design layout structure simplifying the chaos in our early Sites; > 1000 HTML Pages auto Flash NavBars were good! Potential The "break through" was ADOBE's Acrobat PDF - but for years they stuffed the market around; extorted page fees and full of bugs 2018 We progressed to .XIF format from PAGIS XIF from Xerox looked promising but soon a few later fell over . . . disappeared DJVU was a fantastic original intro to Page-Turn Format with searchability but was crippled by other more "commercial" interests and lost end user faroe when eventually Celartem virtually privatised it altho' at the time attracted a lot of professional interest . . . archiving/libraries . . . a highly condensed and a real bonus ! back in the days of "lossey" Internet speed and storage hard Drives - Phased out by us as from round 2000 PDF was our main stay but was very slow AND at the time was chronically hindered by obsolete one-at-time page serving - still a fundamental design issue !From bout 2006 Various Page-Turn ( E-books briefly evolved in quick succession )These never "took off and were a bit Mickey Mouse" cumbersome and slow require user to install readers. Adobe Acrobat PDF continued to slowly but mainly as a page design editor. Many new features but even now is relatively slow - STILL NOT page-Served. In practice limited to ~25pages MAX 10Mbyte file size mainly due to archaic Web speeds. For years these were ridiculously slow ! PDFs were also impossible to edit for year and years - a real hindrance to website designers for obvious reason ! BUT also paranoiia of local Network Web Administrators in Universities and large Corporations stifled more widespread use of PDFs. All this slowly changed but it took years and until ADSL and decent bandwidth was opened up ! Flipping BOOK ~ from 2012 was one of the first really innovative and highly successful PageTurn web-publishing concepts PDF > simulated compatability vis mini HTML huge overall file files and cumbersome to use.T his started emulating compatability with AppleMAC; I-PADS mobile phones and eventually certainly led to Chromtech mass publshing FipPAGE Catalogs on our Website and is still in use today 2016 Problems are . . . massive overheads re number of files and server storage equired, maintenance and conversion time from PDF to FlipPAGE AND local server Uploap "to the cloud" via Our "Chronically Bad Upload Internet speed 800kps) . . . still a major limitation in 2016 . . . bandwidth generally being choked by those "stupid" phones and "twitter & twats" out there!. . . so much for current NBN . . . yeah! Compatability and speed was dramatically improved when Cloud-Server evolved and became more usable from>2014+. We've dumped the "local guys" and "our Cloud" is USA-based and as far as we can tell it is Not a shared system but dedicated to our site ( in Total >150GByte of stored info More-so We managed to evolve a proto SHOP ( Mal's Cart ) and eventually integrate our huge Accounting Database / Price List into FlipPAGEs for on-line Shopping Purpose. THERE IS still simply NO affordable CART or System "out there' . . . that can effectively counter the pseudo manipulation of Currency Exchange Rates and Price. Maintenance and is still an impossibly ridiculous chore for any on-line Shopping Cart of any significance ( Chomtechs Web-Site(s) tries to cover some 30,000 individual product items
A lot of our initial Shop Cart was via MAL's Cart a good if not partly compromised "brilliant" no-cost" 3rd party"hobby-business based effort( but still popular it seems with many enthusiasts and with many interesting ( but with a few limited features ) and this is still used in our Chromtech miniSite and proto SHOP ( altho' at best this is for a quick grab of indicative prices on some of our more "popular" items.
Almost impossible to keep up-to-date !
Arguably the concept of SHOP Carts seems a but misguided & counter-productive for a small business opens up competitors pirating and misuse we prefer a more open interactive communicative approach to our potential customers . . . based on technical "need"avoid the superficiality of E-Bay, Amazon, Google perhaps etc with often lack of detail, wide-open to potential scams etc even avoiding the "siphoning" by such of business ides new products and misuse of commercially "gleaned" data we believe we are "more fair dinkum" in fact than All that !
2013 onwards was crippled with the advent of new HTML5 web standards and HTML5 destroying Adobe "Flash" a backbone of NOF for years in an effort to wipe-out Adobe Flash by APPLE Inc and cohorts. Even now they still don't recognise FLASH NOR PDF and "fans" now require 3rd party plug-ins on their "Mickey Mouse" Systems FlipHTML5 . . . in many respects is a brilliant Update on the Flipping Book concept - altho' still a bit limited in the on-line Cloud-Served version - more features are in the DeskTop Version of FlipHTML5 but still has serious implementation "bugs".
Limitations ? . . . 450 Page(PDF) limit or 150Mb maximum per page "bundle" unlimited total Cloud Space BUT SEARCH Page
Results are NOT highlighted . . . both 2018 now much improved Still it's very much most use-able for us . . . VERY EASY and FAST to implement and Web Speed is very good ! Altho' we also retain older Flipping BOOK our FlipPAGE . . . with obviously some duplication and compromise1 . . . unfortunately requiring some duplication particularly as it is virtually unlimited page size ( eg 800p PDFs per catalog bundle ). There is simply NO WAY you can do this in PDF * hours to download. FlipPAGE and HTML5 are FAST & only ~ 20 secs overhead then < few secs for each new Page-Turn within. We BUNDLE Multiple Catalogs/Brochure in many Category Bundles
As of 2016 FlipHTML5 is our preference (see the Book-Cases) and ALL new larger Catalogs and brochure (via Product Categories) will be updated in this format. In addition to this There is also a PDF Archive ( a bit cumbersome to use but almost complete ) is retained for completeness ONLY , altho' generally we still use PDF for smaller files / individual product items <5 pages but >25 PDF is next to useless as it's just too Slow! Our use of WYSIWYG HTM pages is now slowly being phased out or of minimal use by us ( heavy maintenance required due to our OEM updates) Simplistic Web-page design now utilise "HTML5"
WIX is now being used by us for HTML5 PC page > mobile phone format with reasonable resululs
The"pansy" mobile Web design packages ( WordPress and a "gaggle" of others ) out there are still very "flakey" with their multi-tude of themes and plug-ins makes their effective use most cumbersome to implement.
2018 but as a further compromise
WIX is now being used as a simple Web Design tool for PC Sites but also as a Mickey Mouse ?(<PC) Index interface to FlipHTML5 seems a far better integration which offers more user friendly compatibility re mobile phone / Tablet use etc and a work still in progress !
In summary . . .
We have done the best we can with the affordable web tools available to us. But in this ever evolving web technology we find is not easy to keep focused and up-to-date.
. . . Net Speed is now completely up to YOU and your ISP Plan. . . and there are many traps re GOOGLE, SEOs, ISPs . . . their gimmicks & "tricks" are still for you to fathom out and try to avoid
still much work to optimise our Web design ideas
integrating our vast collection of Supplier / Product info from a relatively clumsy out dated design for mobile use
Our conversion of 1300pc PC page design with NavBARS into a 600px Tablet format we think is a big step forward. Our remaining issue seems to be
getting "our head around" GOOGLE"and Web Ranking System ( no doubt aimed at "Paid-for" advertising purposes
despite whatever we do we have never had any reasonable status to them
With heavy misconduct fines imposed on them WW . .. this appears to be changing and they reluctantly it appears are becoming more open to freely providing SEO "Help" for "beginners" like us. . . . but time will tell of course !
In the meantime we have implemented a few ideas which may help our ranking
missing links have been completely eliminated
lost pages still exist but we do give a customised 404 error page to redirect users
download speed to you are as fast as its possible to make ( and still retain Any info content that's worth-while ! ).
Our HTM graphics have been optimised.
Mobile Users - for users accessing our Main Website from GOOGLE NOW they are auto-redirected to our mobile web page ( www.chromtech-aus.com). From this you can easily again revert back to our PC Site
maybe partly overcoming the use use of misleading GOOGLE denigration ( "Page is not mobile user friendly") in their GOOGLE Search results
GOOGLE fortunately have inadvertantly perhaps left us to use a very good Search mechanism intact for internally browsing our SITE for keywords in Page Titles ( and it's at least partly Boolean driven )
We are Now doing/attempting our own SEO and "spidering" ( paid for 3rd party tools )
Existing Web problems we have > no simple answer Overcoming the "brickwall" effect of GOOGLE and achieving results of any significance to them.
Their problem is that take months to add-on any positive work we do! in this regards
Historically they also tend to leave old and outdated info in their SEARCH results ( and impossible it seems to remove )
Over the years the still controversial use if (-) as word spaces in URL vs our confused use of ("blan" or (-) undeline has created a real mess of we believe must be the cause of a bad GOOGLE Ranking THEY really Need to address this issue perhaps by filtering out these "potential" errors
As short cut to find our web pages for YOU simply add "chromtech" + "keywords" to the Google Search Ignor GOOGLE "mobile Warning" we simply redirect you to our mobile site as best we can ! > perhaps to our intermediate level site ( via chromtech.net.au/mobilea8.htm )
Your feedback is most welcome of course ( How you do actually do that . . . from here tho' ??? . ..
