What are these images?
These images (called “badges”) are frequently used to promote something and/or communicate information about a site. They can include browsers of choice for viewing the site, web technologies used, web standards that the site follows, etc. Below are short explanations of these badges, and why we have them on our site.
- Get Firefox — Firefox is a web browser that is quickly growing in popularity. It is fast, secure, and very stable, and very easy to use. It has numerous useful features such as blocking pop-up windows. Many web developers love this browser because it complies with web standards (the acceptable ways to write web pages). Browsers that obey these rules let us spend more time creating web pages and less time worrying about specific browser bugs. Our site looks great in Firefox. If you don't already have Firefox, download it today and give it a shot.
- XHTML 1.0 — Web pages should ideally follow a standard for the type of code they use for their internal structure. XHTML is a modern standard with improvements and corrections over past versions of HTML. Code that complies with this standard makes it easier and faster for your browser to display the page, partly because it knows exactly what it's dealing with. Mistakes in the page's code can cause irregularities in rendering and make the page look ugly. Our entire site is 100% XHTML compliant, lean and mean.
- CSS 2 — Cascading Style Sheets is another modern web standard that consolidates powerful formatting instructions that can be applied as desired throughout a site. For us, that means web pages are faster to create and easier to modify later. For you, that means your computer downloads pages faster and your browser has less work to do before it can render the page. CSS is also friendly towards persons with visual disabilities, because they can easily override our formatting to suit their individual needs. We strive to make our pages both attractive and fast using CSS standards.
- PHP 4/5 — PHP is a scripting (programming) language that can be used in web page code and is processed by the website before it sends anything to your computer. We use PHP to create dynamic content and control the secure login portions on our site. This helps reduce the number of similar files we have to keep on the server, making room for cooler stuff. Although you won't ever see a lick of our PHP code, it can make the user experience faster and more enjoyable.
- JavaScript — This is a different kind of scripting language, one that your web browser runs after you've downloaded the page. JavaScript has countless uses. We use it for creating rollover image effects, launching mini-windows for audio and video, giving feedback on login screens, and validating form data. (If you have problems with these functions, check whether JavaScript is disabled.) JavaScript is useful, but is only run in your browser; it is not capable of reading or modifying information on your computer, so there's no need to worry about security or viruses.
- Made on a Mac — This website was designed on Apple computers using OS X. (If you haven't heard about Macs recently, you're missing something big.) Apple computers are incredibly powerful and stable, incomparably easy to use, and exceptionally beautiful. Not only are they "good at graphics", but anything else you can throw at them, too. If you haven't taken a Mac for a spin in the last few years (or ever), you really should see what everyone's talking about.
Each page on our site has the badges for XHTML and CSS along the bottom. These images link to sites called "validators" which check to see if our code is indeed compliant with these web standards. They are primarily for our use, but feel free to check whether we're really on top of things. If you find any errors, please let us know and we'll get them fixed.
