Web Technology

Most people who use the internet today are taking advantage of new technology. The price of computers has come down and the performance has improved over what was available even 5 years ago. Laptops have become the norm, and wide screens allow users to watch their favourite DVD's on their computers. We have noticed the following:

• Less than 1% of the users who access material from our servers are using Internet Explorer 5 or 5.5. Most who use IE are using either version 6 or version 7.
• The number of people using browsers other that IE is steadily and dramatically increasing. The most popular is Firefox.

We have designed this site to present a large amount of information. To provide room for display, we have set it to a screen width of 1240 pixels, so that it can display without triggering a horizontal scroll bar on 1280X1024 screens. When I found I needed glasses, I went to the opthalmologist and got glasses. I did not reduce my screen resolution to make the letters bigger! Most of our users prefer the format so they can scan the information without excessive scrolling.

We support IE version 6 and above, Firefox 2 and above, as well as a number of less well known browsers. We do test, and the site generally displays well, in IE 5.5, but there are some display quirks that cannot be corrected.

We use a PayPal interface for all of our financial transactions. Our experience is that users (correctly) place more trust in an established third party than they do passing credit card information to the primary web site. PayPal has an unblemished reputation for integrity. The payment account we use is our K-IT.ca account with PayPal.

The site is still under active development, even though we are live. We cannot yet afford a separate test-bed. We work to keep the site functional during the development, and we are usually successful. When an error is made and it affects the site, it is usually reversed within minutes. If you have a problem retrieving a page, please try again. We have probably already fixed things. If the problem persists, please let us know about it.

If you have any questions about our web design, or any technical questions, please post them here.