"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:QiFtd.157408$V41.134990@attbi_s52...
I turn once again to you, the great internet gurus of aviation, for answers
to the mysteries of the web...

Yesterday NPR announced that only a third of internet users are connected
at high speed, using either DSL or cable. This truly surprised me, and
I'm absolutely amazed that so few people have made the jump to high-speed
internet -- I could never, ever go back to dial-up, and have been on cable
modem for years.

Because of this rather shocking statistic I instantly redesigned our
webpage so that the home page is smaller and opens more quickly.
(According to what Frontpage was telling me, it would have taken several
minutes to open over a 28.8 modem!) It never dawned on me to design the
page for dial-up, because I thought slow connections were on there way
out!

WEBSITE QUESTIONS for the group, if you please:
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1. Does anyone know what the average speed modem is being used by the 70%
of people still using dial-up?

2. I hear people say that Java is "evil" all the time -- yet it seems that
every cool effect on a webpage requires Java. What is bad about Java
scripting? How about "Flashmedia"?

3. I have pared our opening page back to practically nothing, yet it STILL
seems to be taking too long to open. I added a new "hit" counter
yesterday -- could that be slowing it down so much? (It's
www.AlexisParkInn.com if you want to take a gander at it.) How long is
it taking to open on your computer?

4. I tried to look at the page from Mary's computer (which has the screen
resolution set to "Mr. Magoo" settings) -- and it locked up her computer.
I re-booted and checked on the Microsoft website, which showed that she
had, like, ten "critical updates" to Win XP that she had not installed --
so I installed them for her.

Now the page runs normally, but I'm worried about having a website that
might actually freeze someone's computer. Can anyone see anything on the
page that could have caused that? Or was it just a glitch in Mary's PC?

An ON-LINE BOOKING question for the group, if you please:
**************************************************
I am about to sign a contract with a company that will provide us with
real-time, on-line reservation and GDS support for hotels. This will
completely change the way we do business, and will add a significant cost
to our operation.

How many of you guys actually make real-time, on-line hotel reservations?
My gut feel has always been that we would eventually have to jump on this
band-wagon, because more and more people are booking on-line. However,
this newly released figure, showing such low high-speed internet usage,
really makes me wonder if people are actually using on-line bookings much,
or if this is a tiny minority using it only occasionally.


I heard the same story and my shock was the other way. While I agree I could
never go back to dial-up I know many, many people who still use it. Also,
keep in mind all those NetZero ads that have been running on TV are for
dial-up.

1. I'd be 56k has been the standard for quite a while now and unless the
telecom tarriffs change that ain't going to increase any time soon.

2. JAVA and ActiveX both allow a program to be downloaded and run on your
computer. The negative outcome from that is pretty obvious.

3. I was getting 4 - 5 seconds on 5 loads I did. On the last load the Java
applet for the counter paused for about 10 seconds.

4. My bet it was the Java Applet.

Online Reservations.

Be for I did that I create a form that would allow people to e-mail you
reservations just to see what the interest is for the service. I'd also shop
the hell out of it. There are a lot of good web designers out there.

Gig