Jim's Ad Hoc "ramble" about Our CHROMTECH Website
 . . . yes it has been a long time . . . and literally it has been "a bit of a pain in the arse" !  . . . all the "foibles" of PCs . . . the Internet . . . ever ongoing upgrading and debugging of Op System and software a la Windows etc generally mixed with "scumbag" fraudsters, scammers, viruses etc . . . blighted by the Worldwide tying up of "bandwidth by "nerds"with next to useless Facebook, Twitters . . . mobile phone "junkies" . . . AND a strong argument for a decent / secure independent business WWW.
 
INTRO  to web design and the Internet started way back in 1992 with old Bulletin Boards and CB Radio etc
. . . believe me before Telstra even new of the Internet.
All Hack work Coding !
Much of our early page design was via hack coding or basic HTM editors . . . in hindsight absolute "crap" of course and nowadays
very few would ever bother.
WysiWyg and Page-Layout software was primitive until about 1998 with the advent of NetObjects Fusion which we still use to this day progressively updating right thru' version to current NOF15 ( 2016 and waiting . . . but most of it patchwork and virtually obsolete ! much of it proves still to be junk !
The unique brilliant feature is the heirarchial design layout structure simplifying the chaos in our early Sites;
> 1000 HTML Pages auto Flash NavBars were good !
Potential The "break through" was ADOBE's Acrobat PDF - but for years they stiffed the market around; extorted page fees
and was fill of bugs.
2018 We progressed to .XIF format from PAGIS  XIF from Xerox looked promising but soon a few years later fell over . . . disappeared !
DJVU was a fantastic original intro to Page-Turn Format with searchability but was crippled by other more "commercial" interests and lost end user favor when eventually Celartem virtually privatized it altho' at the time attracted a lot of professional interest
. . . archiving / libraries . . . a highly condensed and a real bonus !! back in the days of "lossey" Internet speed and storage hard drives.
Phased out by us as from round 2000.
PDF was our main stay but was very slow AND at the time was chronically hindered by obsolete one-at-time page serving - still a fundamental design issue !

From about 2006 Various Page-Turn (E-books evolved in quick succession.
These never "took off and were a bit "Mickey Mouse" cumbersome and slow require user ti install readers.

Adobe Acrobat PDF continued to slowly but mainly as a page design editor Many new features but even now is relatively slow -  STILL > > NOT page-Served !
In practice limited to 125pages MAX 10Mbyte file size mainly due to archaic Web speeds.
or years these were ridiculously slow !
PDFs were also impossible to edit for year and years -  a real hindrance to website designers for obvious reason !
BUT also paranoia of local Network Web Administrators in Universities and large Corporations stifled more widespread
use of PDFs
All this slowly changed but it took years and until ADSL and decent bandwidth was opened up !

Flipping BOOK ~ from 2012 was one of the first really innovative and highly successful Page-Turn web-publishing concepts PDF
> simulated compatability via mini HTML huge overall file files and cumbersome to use.
This started emulating compatibility with AppleMAC; I-PADS mobile phones and eventually certainly led to Chromtech mass publlshing FlipPAGE Catalogs on our Website and is still in use today 2016.
Problems are . . . massive overheads re number of files and server storage required, maintenance and conversion time from PDF tp FlipPAGE AND local server Upload "to the cloud" via Our "Chronically Bad Upload Internet speed  800kbs) . . . still a major limitation in 2016 . . . bandwidth generally being choked by those "stupid" phones and "twitter & twats" out there!
. . . so much for current BBN . . . yeah !
Compatibility and speed was dramatically improved when Cloud-Server evolved and became more usable from>2014+
We've dumped the "local guys" and "our Cloud" is USA-based and as far as we can tell it  is Not a shared system but dedicated to our site
( in Total >150Gbyte of stored info.
More-so We managed to evolve "proto SHOP" (Mal's Cart and eventually integrate our huge Accounting Database / Price List into FlipPAGEs for on-line Shopping Purpose. THERE IS NO affordable CART or System that can effectively counter the pseudo manipulation of Currency Exchange Rates and Price Maintenance is still an impossibly ridiculous chore for any on-line Shopping Cart of and significance ( Chromtechs Sites tries to cover some 40,000 individual product items 
A lot of our initial Shop Cart was via MAL's Cart a 3rd party"hobby-business based effort ( still popular_ and with many interesting
but very limited features) stlll used in our Chromtech miniSite and "proto-SHOP" ( At best this is for a quick grab of indicative prices on
some of our more "popular" items.
Almost impossible to keep up-to-date !

2013 onwards was crippled with the advent of new HTML5 web standards and HTML5 destroying Adobe "Flash" . . .
a backbone of NOF for years in an effort to wipe-out Adobe Flash by APPLE Inc and cohorts
Even now they still don't recognise FLASH NOR PDF and "fans" now require 3rd party plug-ins on their "Mickey Mouse" Systems

FlipHTML5 in many respects is a brilliant Update on the FlippingBook concept.
- altho' still a bit limited in the on-line Cloud-Served version - more features are in the DeskTop Version of FlipHTML5 but still has serious implementation "bugs".
Limitations ? . . . 450 Page(PDF) limit or 150Mb maximum per page "bundle" unlimited total Cloud Space BUT SEARCH Page Results
are NOT highlighted.
Still it's very much most use-able for us . . . VERY EASY and FAST to implement and Web Speed is very good !

Altho' we also retain Flipping BOOK our FlipPAGE ) . . . unfortunately requiring some Dupllcation particularly as it is virtually unlimited
page size ( eg 800p PDFs per catalog bundle.
There is NO WAY you can do this in PDF * hours to download.
FlipPAGE and HTML5 are FAST & only ~ 20 secs overhead then < few secs for each new Page-Turn within.
We BUNDLE Multiple Catalogs/Brochure in many Category Bundles.

As of 2016 FlipHTML5 is our preference (see the BookCases) and ALL new larger Catalogs and brochure (via Product Category   
> & will be updated in this format.
There is  also a PDF Archive ( a bit cumbersome to use but almost complete ) is retained for completeness ONLY but generally we still use PDF for smaller files / individual prodict items <5 pages but >25PDF is next to useless as it's just too Slow !

Our use of WYSIWYG HTM pages is now slowly being phased out or of minimal use by us ( heavy maintenace required due to our OEM .updates), THIS MORE Simplistic Webpage design now utilise "HTML5" WIX  and this is also is fully compatible re phones etc.

We have done the Very Best we Can to keep focused and up-to-date . . . Net Speed is now completely up to YOU and your ISP Plan
. . .but gimmicks are still evolving in the broad sense - Australia now downwards adjusted relatively to that of a 3rd World Country
under "Turnbulls' so-called BBN". > > . our Nuet Speed 40/20MBS is obviously still "choked"  ( > under par WWW ) BUT Still QUITE USABLE ! 
  > when at least Telstra and Optus in AUSTRALIA "gets their act together ! . . . altho' we OFTEN have to swap between BOTH  !
. . . "Cloud-Serving by OUR USA "Hosts" > does help !

Our (New(er) Site(s)? >  SHOPPE ARE "more "Responsive"" and Compatible with ALL Systems from PC > AppleMAC > I-PADS > Mobile Phones
ncluding Androids Includes comprehensive Nav Bars and Built-in SEARCH Capability and as of 2015 a full-blown SHOPPING Cart
via our NEW 2016+ Site is now "pansied" up a bit in OUR more gimmicky 2016+ Site.

COMPLETE DISCLAIMER  : Our Main Technical Website is full of backup info and a Laptop>PC is recommended for Maximum benefit to you, !  . . .  but we still refuse to "pamper" to those mobile phone "junkies" and the "Twitter & Twat" & :"in Your Face-BOOK" mentality and their dyslexic "text mode brains" > & words of "one syllable" !