Island Web Works

For my first (ever) blog I thought some background may be a good idea.  In 2001 we started up a web design business with great ideas about becoming internet zillionaires…. well pay the mortgage at least, but after 6 months we realised that the local market was too small to achieve this in web design alone. So we re-focused ourselves on software development and in the process built an Award Winning CRM software called MIGTurbo. Since 2001 we have produced many different software products (and web sites) for clients, and now have well over 100 clients locally.

At the outset we set ourselves one simple goal; do the best we can and keep our promises, which judging by the number of clients we continue to do business with is obviously a good approach. We now focus on CRM & BPR (Business Proces Re-engineering) projects and are represented in the UK and Channel Islands via a number of resellers who re-sell our MIGTurbo software.

When we started off there were 2 of us, now there are 6 of us and we will probably need to take on another couple of people within the next 12 months.

The reason for my title.. well when we started, like most new businesses we were happy to get any business just to keep busy - now, however, with several projects usually on the go at any one time, oh how I miss those early days.

Charles Uncategorized

Kicking off our new blog, in which we hope to give you a glimpse at inside of the  Island Web Works’ team, each of us has come up with a site that helped, inspired or made us smile this week.

Andreas has been tentatively getting acquainted with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, ready for working with ASP.NET which will form the backbone of the new version of our MIGTurbo CRM application. Tentative steps indeed, a committed user of Adobe’s suite we all have a bet on whether he’ll switch to the [superior?] Visual Studio environment sooner than he thinks. We think he should check out some case studies to help decide.

Charles currently has his nose in figures spewing from one of the more advanced MIGTurbo plug-ins we have developed. I guess I better send him this Webinar on Blogging for Business when he’s less busy. It’s a really good presentation (if a little on the quiet side) that shows how to write your own business blog which we have found really useful in making sure that we’re doing things right. Of course, we’ve been monitoring the social media space for some time and its key players both on and off island so we’re confident we’re following best practice. (But do tell us if you think differently!)

Meanwhile Stephen has been busy maintaining some of our clients’ web sites while also testing Microsoft’s latest browser, Internet Explorer 8. Now nearing its final release with Release Candidate 1, it’s important to make sure your own web site isn’t causing any headaches. Cross-browser compatibility is a constant thorn in a web designers side, having to make sure your shiny new web site works across all browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari & Opera) is made even more difficult when you have to consider that there is a still a large proportion of surfers using older versions of IE and Firefox, and with some exciting new style sheet techniques coming up in CSS3 that will only be able to work in the very latest of browsers, it may be a good time to update your browser and take some time to think of your poor web designer.

I [Nathan] have been getting my teeth into the new version of our successful CRM application MIGTurbo, which probably explains the ever-increasing library of thick textbooks on my desk. A messy desk is a sign of a busy mind, I’m sure. With frameworks and ideas floating around my head, it’s difficult to really pick one out that really stands out and without getting a little too nerdy about it all. We’re all very excited about the new version, one reason for which is the opportunities it gives us in revisiting an existing successful user interface which people are familiar with while introducing new “Web 2.0″ features such as slidy things, AJAXy things and other snazziness that will hopefully give users that “ahhh” feeling when they log in. We’ve decided to use a set of components from Telerik that allow us to create rich interfaces quickly. One of the side benefits of this is it comes with a build of jQuery, a client-side Javascript framework that helped me reduce 40 lines of Javascript to just 9.

We have a lot of plans in keeping this blog up to date and interactive, combining it with other publishing channels we use. We’re looking forward to publishing some of the more interesting things that occur here at Island Web Works, hope you can join us on our journey. Have a great weekend!

Nathan Friday Feeling jQuery, MIGTurbo, Telerik