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DEVELOPMENT
OPTIONS
There are a variety
of new technologies to publish your
output on your companies intranet or the
web. This page explores some of the pros
and cons of the two most common
approaches. There are two major
considerations, one is whether you would
like your site to optimized for the
screen or the printer, the other is the
amount of resources you are willing
commit to publishing on the web.
We feel
that the Adobe Acrobat approach makes the
most sense for our clients that have a limited audience
and need frequent updates. For wider audiences,
custom HTML programming is probably best because many
do not have the Acrobat reader, and download times can
be much faster using HTML.
ADOBE
ACROBAT
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SUMMARY
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| This solution is
best for clients who publish
large quantities to a group of
people who are willing to
download the free acrobat reader.
It is almost as easy as printing,
is true "what you see is
what you get", and your
audience can print your reports
and get very high quality output
that rivals the originals. Click here
for a sample of a report in Acrobat (Requires
the Acrobat Reader). |
ADVANTAGES
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- Easist
approach.
- Printed
output from the web is
very high quality.
- With a
little extra effort,
Acrobat allows
customization of your
output including
hyperlinks.
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DRAWBACKS
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- Audience
must download free
Acrobat reader.
- Download
times can be substantial,
although there are ways
to minimize this.
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COST
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MICROSOFT
FRONTPAGE
OR EQUIVALENT
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SUMMARY
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| This is the best
approach for clients who want the
highest quality web sites, are
less concerned about the output
when printed off of the web, and
who have the resources to do the
extra work. Although the new
software makes it easy it still
requires some effort. Click here
to see a sample of a page from this
site that incorporates graphs and tables from
Excel. |
ADVANTAGES
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- This
is true web publishing.
This affords great
flexibility. Frontpage
has templates to create a
variety of different web
pages. Frontpage is
better at creating web
pages than Publisher
because that is all it
does. The sky is the
limit.
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DRAWBACKS
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- Labor
intensive.
- Requires
learning new skills.
- The
printed output from the
web site is not the same
as the original.
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COST
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- Frontpage
is now bundled in some of
the more expensive
Microsoft Office 2000
suites or it is around
$130. Frontpage Express
is free but is not nearly as good.
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Main Web Development Page
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