About Sun-tech.org
Sun-tech.org is the website for SUN Area Technical Institute of New Berlin, Pennsylvania. The site was originally developed in the mid-nineties by a privately owned web design firm and was brought in-house in 2009 in order to expedite updates and save thousands annually in hosting and maintenance fees. Network Technician Brian Reich currently develops and maintains the site.
Technologies
Throughout the transition from outsourced development to in-house management of our site, certain sections of sun-tech.org remain static HTML files. The site continues to be successfully transitioned to the dynamic technologies discussed below.
The LAMP Platform
SUN Tech's website runs on what is generally known as the LAMP stack, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. We chose these technologies for their time-tested reliability, low cost of adoption, and the developer's previous experience with the platform.
Zend Framework
The Zend Framework is an open source collection of object-oriented PHP code supported both by the open source community and leading industry vendors including Google, Amazon, and Flickr. The Zend Framework enables SUN Area Technical Institute to rapidly develop not only simple HTML pages but also interactive, database-backed web applications like our Grade Conversion Utility.
Other Technologies
- ExtJS : a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich Internet applications.
- 960 Grid System : A CSS template for simplifying site layouts at common screen widths.
Images and Icons
The vast majority of artwork found on this website was created in Adobe Creative Suite. Custom artwork is designed both by the in-house web developer and by the Advertising Art & Design class where indicated.
Favicon
The “faveicon” for sun-tech.org
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was designed by 2009-2010 Advertising Art and Design student Selah
Reitenbach of Shikellamy School District.
Other Image Sources
- Function Icon Set - A set of beautiful icons chosen for our primary site navigation.
- Silk Icons - A huge set of icons, perfect for adornment of UI widgets. We use this icon pack internally for our content management system.
Web Standards
With each update to our website, SUN Area Technical Institute has made adherence to web standards and accessibility requirements a priority.
XHTML 1.0 Strict
The XHTML 1.0 Strict standard was chosen as our mark-up language of choice for a variety of reasons:
- Simplified Code Debugging. When using a strict HTML variant, coding errors and improperly nested HTML tags are easily caught while a page is under development using modern development tools, like Eclipse.
- Simplified Presentation. Using valid markup of any flavor makes debugging rendering and cross-browser incompatibility issues simpler by ensuring that invalid or unexpected code constructs have been removed from the equation prior to dealing with these issues.
- Improved Accessibility. Pages developed in standard, semantic markup are more easily understood by assistive technologies such as screen readers.
- Improved Signal-to-Noise Ratio. Pages developed with standards based, semantic markup generally contain more information than code leading to faster downloads, shorter page rendering times, and improved search engine optimization.