Meadowlark: Sheffield based computer consultancy

Software tools we use:

JavaScript

JavaScript is a client side programming language. It runs in the users browser and provides the type of dynamic experience that html cannot. It is scope and power is only exceeded by Flash ActionScript, which is really a development of JavaScript.

Meadowlark generally prefer ActionScript and other scripting languages to JavaScript, but simple scripts can be used to good effect.

Advantages of JavaScript:

• JavaScript exploits the often extensive client computing resources that are typically underutilised when the user is accessing a web site.
• JavaScript can be useful on intranets where browser choice is controlled and known, and the developer is providing extra functionality within the relatively secure sandbox and behind a corporate firewall.

What you can expect from computer hardware in the future?

1. Smaller faster, cheaper, lighter computers for the desktop.  They will be no larger than a DVD drive.  They will be silent, and run free software, and much of this will be web based.  They will use solid state disks, and large quantities of cheap memory.

2. More powerful mobile phones will largely replace traditional PCs.  The screens of mobiles will occupy as much of the phone as physicallly possible.  "Soft buttons will have largely replaced mechanical buttons in top of the range phones.

3. Sophisticated screen display technology will be available that will allow us to use bigger computer monitors in smaller less likely workplaces.

4. Micro-factories: places of work no bigger than a loft extension, where budding entrepreneurs labour in their free time "printing" products with 3D printers and selling their wares by the internet.