Windows Software Development

The Graphics Network

Training and Development for Windows and the Web

01285 713297 ♦ info@tgn.co.uk

The Graphics Network has been providing quality training and software development services for Windows since 1988. We are UK based but have provided our services throughout the world, from Scandinavia to Australia.


A Wealth of Experience In the 2 decades we have been developing for Windows we have embraced new technologies as they have arrived. Initially C was the only language truly supported, in the days when memory management was everything, and we used C for many projects. We still use C from time to time, mainly for things like device drivers and firmware. When Visual Basic emerged we used this where it was appropriate, and frequently used VB for the front end of applications with calls through to dynamic link libraries written in C. C became C++, and while the Microsoft Foundation Classes library which came with Visual C++ was far from perfect it revolutionalized technical Windows development. Until the arrival of .Net, this was our mainstream technology. We loved Java when it arrived, as it was very much a C++ for the modern generation, and particularly liked its small size and platform independence. Sadly politics intervened to make it a less than ideal environment for Windows. At the same time it grew and grew, so while we were involved in enterprise level Java for a while we found we couldn’t cover both Windows and its ‘competitor’ so concentrated on Windows. .Net of course gave us all the benefits of Java in the Windows environment, and we quickly moved into both C# and Visual Basic.Net development.


Developing for the Web While our initial experiences with networking were very much Windows related, we began exploiting the Internet in earnest in the mid 1990s. While our early work was in C and C++, we rapidly assimilated developments like Servlets, ASP, JSP and PHP into our work. Many of our customers prefer to work in a LAMP environment, using PHP and MySQL, so we support this as well as the Microsoft ASP.Net world.


Current Languages C# is our language of choice, closely followed by Visual Basic, and a recent large project proved to us that C# can do everything we used to do in C++, often with better performance. We still code in C++, particularly as we are still enhancing projects for our customers which began more than a decade ago. For databases, our earliest work was with the Visual Basic/Access JET engine, but we quickly moved into SQL Server and MySQL which remain our standards. Our strength is our versatility. Many people can write a web page or a simple desktop form with a modern tool, but if you want to achieve something which is limited only by your imagination then we can help.