Age of Open Source Information

Remember the dictionaries and books you read as a kid? Those books had to be replaced every couple of years as the facts in the books changed. Now imagine if you never have to replace a book as the changes can be incorporated along with the old information.

This is the technology of open source development. It is a form of licensing agreement which lets the users to freely alter a work, use a particular work in different ways, develop a new work centered on the original, or integrate the work into a bigger project. This eliminates the barriers between innovators by promoting a free exchange of ideas for driving creative, technological, and scientific progression.

Open source development is now days favored by most of the business and government organizations. By initiating an open source permit on an original work, an organization approves to:

• Make a program's code accessible to the public in its totality

• Permit anyone to modify, improve or re- engineer a program's code

• Allow the creation of works derived from the original work

• Enable the program to be utilized by the user for any purpose he wishes 

Why create an Open Source at all?

An open source license is a contrast to the "proprietary licensing." Consider the scenario where a user first creates a piece of proprietary software, just like Adobe Photoshop, or iTunes. The user usually agrees to the terms stating that they will not change or modify the source code and will utilize the software in ways approved by the manufacturer. The back-end code of the proprietary software is not made available to the public. The software's owner has the liberty to take legal actions against anyone who attempts to copy or alter the code. 

However, the idea of open source information is refreshing and revolutionary at the same time. Unlike Proprietary licenses, these promote knowledge to be shared across various communities. Developing new technologies through collaboration between programmers and engineers have been going on since the earliest days of computers. For example, a programmer in Singapore develops a new program, and then another programmer in California learns the application and uncovers ways to improvise. 

Hence an open source platform like this ensures knowledge is shared for the benefits of the communities on the whole. In fact, the technological advancement that we have noticed in the last few decades is the result of open source movement. 

Embracing CSS in Website development

The invention of CSS dates back to 1996. However, it gained mainstream recognition by early 2000 after the leading web browsers started embracing its advanced features. Now, CSS or Cascading Style Sheets serve as the essentials of modern website development model. It is a powerful HTML tool that offers effortless control over website presentation and layout by simply separating the content from design.

Wondering why CSS is imperative in Web Development?

• First and foremost, it enhances website presentation. The standalone benefit of CSS is that it adds superior flexibility and interactive ability to web development. It enables developers greater control over the design allowing them to make detailed segment-wise changes. Likewise customizing a page is easier using CSS than basic HTML. This lets web developers design different looks for every page. 

• Changes across web pages can be easily and smoothly employed. This is possible because CSS keeps the content separate from the design. Hence, minimizes the delivery times and cost of forthcoming edits. Also, CSS eliminates the tedious coding style of HTML, ensuring faster development and error reductions.

• Lastly and most importantly, it helps in decreasing the page load time considerably. It is quite evident by now that slow speed is a killer. It can repel potential customers away from your website. With CSS, browsing gets faster as the browsers need to download the CSS rules only once and cache them for loading all the web pages. This improvises the entire user experience.

Besides all its good traits, there is only one major drawback of CSS. Its performance is highly dependent on the browser. All browsers and their different versions function differently. Your CSS needs to be tuned for all these variants. That’s why you should always have a well-structured HTML integrated with good CSS.  Anyways its benefits offset its limitations.  It is undoubtedly a very handy web development tool making the life of a web designer so much simpler.

As a goal-driven web development company, we want to make your life easier by taking over the task of developing a successful business website. Contact us today!