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Help & About the Site Copyrights & Other Legalese

"Disregard the man behind the curtain." Here we lay bare the secrets of creating the foundation for a user driven, dynamic website and then adding the seeds of content that are spurring others on to add more. In creating this site, we have been on the bleeding edge; maybe this page will help save you some cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

Products are organized as:

Highlighted Product Content Generation Graphics Databases Server Maintenance Miscellaneous & Productivity Thanks

Below, we've tried to document the tools and processes we used from a webmaster's perspective. Thanks to those who helped make it possible. To help you choose the best tool for your web project, we've included references to where you can find out more information about given products. I hope it will save you some time!

Obligatory legal disclaimer: Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. Mention of products is for informational purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation. InfoMatters, Inc. assumes no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance, or use of these products. All understandings, agreements, or warranties, if any, take place directly between the vendors and the prospective users. Product specifications are subject to change without notice.

PS. If you haven't already discovered it, this site makes extensive use of tables and forms. To access most of the plethora of information we have, you'll need these features in your browser.

	EveryWare Development Corporation (888/819-2500) 6733 Mississauga Road, 7th Floor Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 6J5
	international: 888/819-2500 fax: 905/819-1172	e-mail: [email protected] web: www.everyware.com
	Tango a rapidly expanding family of IRAD tools and applications that integrate databases and Web servers for dynamic Web-based applications. The Tango Editor is a visual development environment that lets you easily publish your databases on the webby simply specifying the desired layout, selecting the fields from the database palette, and dragging them into the Builder window. It allows finding, inserting, updating, and deleting records without wasting valuable time writing HTML or CGI code.
On this site: Tango is our primary tool for real-time publishing the data in the more than 30 inter-related databases that provide the incredibly flexible and easy to maintain backbone of the site. It offers an easy to program interface to create the search forms, the lists, and the linked detail records.

Content Generation

BBEdit - is the primary HTML coding environment for our sites. With it's color coding, HTML tag extensions, and a complex set of scripted extensions and GREP searches that we created, standardization is almost achievable. A custom version of "Format" and "Pagemill Cleaner" extensions helps a bunch too!

Symantec Visual Page - is the WYSIWYG editor we use when we use such tools (we were one of a very few beta testers, when it was called "Dendera"). It was the first tool that would handle variable width table columns. However, we have still yet to find a WYSIWYG tool that can create the tight code we create by hand in BBEdit.

Photoshop - an indispensable tool for creating graphics from scratch, applying effects such as drop shadows, etc. Now if it would only support AppleScript instead of some proprietary Wintel scripting language, life would be good.(the good news is that QuicKeys 3.5 is finally compatible with Photoshop menu commands, which makes file format conversions much nicer).

Dimensions - a great tool for creating 3D objects and effects by extruding, revolving, beveling, and manipulating simple 2D objects. It's also good for adding depth to your existing artwork.

Freehand - the vector based graphic tool of choice for some of our graphic artists.

Illustrator - the choice of other of our graphic artists for vector based graphics.

PhotoJPEG and PhotoGIF - a file format plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows the creation and editing highly optimized, web-ready GIFs, GIF animations, and JPEGs.

Filemaker Pro - probably the easiest to use relational database application for the power it provides. It's also inexpensive and easy for clients to manipulate. While we use Oracle or SQL Server for really high volume sites, if setup correctly, FileMaker-based sites can handle 50,000+ page impressions a day with tens of thousands of records per database.

Tango - Tango is our primary tool for real-time publishing the data in the scores of inter-related databases that provide the incredibly flexible and easy to maintain backbone of the site. It offers an easy to program interface to create the search forms, the lists, and the linked detail records. The product was originally prototyped with a product co-created by our President.

Webstar - what can we say, without it, you wouldn't be seeing this page. Great stuff.

Netcloak - a crucial Mac Web server add-on that provides macros, server side includes and many other extensions to the HTML language. NetCloak makes it easy to manage large sites and to make sweeping changes in one place. By using standardized headers and footers, the entire look of the site can be changed in once place - the Netcloak macros file. Netcloak makes adding such features as consistent backgrounds and colors, meta tags, automatic page counters, last modified date, and the page's current URL a snap. Netcloak even makes simple multi-homing a breeze! Netcloak even speeds up file access with its built-in caching feature. Furthermore, it's back-end capabilities make seamless integration with a database tool such as Tango a snap.

Eudora Internet Mail Server - the site's email server, started out as Apple's freeware "AIMS". Qualcomm purchased it and added a bunch of cool features. They still offer a freeware and a commercial version.

Timbuktu - remote control software allowing any Macintosh to connect, communicate, and collaborate with another Macintosh or Windows PC regardless of location. Timbuktu Pro is ideal for accessing corporate network resources, transferring files, remote control of other computers, collaboration, etc. We've been using it since version 1.0!

Rumpus - the second most robust FTP server we've found, but it's supported on an ongoing basis. FTP Share from After 5pm Software, then White Pines, was the most bullet proof and highest capacity

ChoosePage - my venerable FaceSpan popup redirector has been replaced with this fast, low memory footprint plugin which handles the popup navigation.

PageSentry - monitors the website from other servers and alerts us should the server not be available.

AppleScript - a powerful glue that makes the Macintosh a best of class internet authoring and server solution. At it's low level Apple Event roots, it's what Webstar and CGI's used to communicate with each other.Check out the AppleScript site to get more info!

FaceSpan - the interface designer and application builder for OSA (AppleScript, Frontier, etc.) is an essential tool for creating conversion utilities, CGI's, and HTML time savers.

Summary - site statistics evaluation. It's fast. Very fast. It's easy to install and run. It creates great bar graphs that makes evaluation simple. We started with the freeware version, Analog, and have since moved up to the commercial, multi-site version.

Stuffit - compress and uncompress files explicitly or transparently is key for everything from getting new versions of software to automatically decoding uploaded files.

Virex - scriptable app that allows our script to check uploaded files for bad things.

QuicKeys - automates all those Photoshop conversions, allows one to skip back and forth between all these apps when authoring, and automates glossary entries (eg, for paragraphs, quote entities, etc.)

HoverBar - one of the best floating utility bars. HoverBar allows us to have all of these web apps just a drag and drop away - especially helpful since one may open a given file in multiple apps, in succession.