OT - Internet and on-line booking questions for the group

Do you really need a gigantic graphic splash screen? What does it gain
you?

What is "gigantic" about it?
--

The amount of screen real estate it takes up.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

What is "gigantic" about it?
--

The amount of screen real estate it takes up.

Really? I've got the tables set to 80%, which *should* keep the page from
being larger than the screen size.

What screen resolution are you running? On my monitor (set to 1200 x 1600)
my opening page only takes up about 3/4 of the screen.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

What is "gigantic" about it?

The amount of screen real estate it takes up.

Really? I've got the tables set to 80%, which *should* keep the page from
being larger than the screen size.

What screen resolution are you running? On my monitor (set to 1200 x 1600)
my opening page only takes up about 3/4 of the screen.

I have a twenty-one inch screen, I'm running 1600x1200, Windows 98,
Netscape 7.2, and have the web browser set to open in 2/5 of the
screen width. Your graphic hangs off the right side of my screen.

I often run Email, IM, a text editor, calendar, word processor, and a
file browser at the same time and use the screen for these apps too.

It's a pretty picture, but not one that's worth forcing horizontal
scrolling. Maybe one problem is that you have an information bar on
the left. That information bar is the most important element on the
screen, and it is relegated to postage stamp status. You use
font size="2"
all over the place and use a font face that is not very monitor
friendly in the first place. Why so teeny? (base font size is 3,
unless you disregard the user's defaults and force a basefont tag on
the user.) I'd want to see this information larger than base size,
say 4 or 5. Even better is to use a heading type tag.

You are still using javascript on the page, for example:
if(MSFPhover) {
MSFPnav2n=MSFPpreload("_derived/welcome_to_the_inn.htm_cmp_axis110_vbtn.gif");


I have no idea why I'd wanat to preload a .gif file, and in fact I
don't think I do. But the script is there.

While I'm at it, the "welcome to the inn" page also hangs off the
edge. I bet it's the following line and those like it:

table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"
style="border-collapse: collapse" width="593" height="60"

You specify an exact width, and I then have to scroll around when it
doesn't fit (rather than have the table itself accomodate me).
Remember, that 593 pixels is added to the navigation bar on the left,
and to everything else on the page.

The "breakfast in your suite" page is better - I can narrow that page
quite a bit and it accomodates me, until I squeeze it past the point
of the navigation bar on the left, and the word "Breakfast" in the
headline. Make the typeface smaller. You specify
style="font-size: 42pt"
which is =awful= design! People have different sized screens, browser
windows, etc, and 42pt might be the whole screen! Use relative sizes
(size=6) or better, descriptor tags ("heading") which let the browser
figure out how to best handle it. HTML is a "markup" language, not a
layout language. "Markup" means you tell the browser what a
particular element =functions= as, (i.e. is it a heading, body text,
quote, sample computer code, etc) and the browser formats it
appropriately, based on the browser's capabilities.

"Long term guests" has the table problem in spades. It demands more
than half my 1600 pixels to display properly (and this is true even if
I reduce the type size in my browser to the point where I have microbe
sized type - it still requires fifty acres of real estate because of
the fixed table size. 725 pixels, plus another 165 pixels for the
navigation bar. That's almost 900 pixels =required= as a minimum!

I may very well want to shrink a window when I compare it with two
other hotels, or have three of your own pages open at once (I'm
comparing two, my wife is reading the third over my shoulder), or want
to post to a newsgroup in the meanwhile. Just imagine doing this on a
laptop with 800 pixels to work with. Feh!

Part of the problem is that you are using FrontPage, which
automatically does everything the Microsoft way and won't tell you.
These fixed widths can be changed to percents or defaults (honor the
user defaults!) but it takes work, and you have to get them all (and
ensure that FrontPage won't "improve" your web page the next time you
update it).

Hope this helps. Horizontal scrolling is a big negative in a web
site, and should be fixed.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"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:
**************************************************
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

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 13:51:02 -0600, "Gig Giacona"
wrote:

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.

We've been told for years that our phone lines simply will not handle
any modem speed greater than 28.8. We've tried and found that at 56K,
the modem kept dropping us off line, causing us to have to reconnect
frequently. Not just annoying, it destroyed any ability to search on
the net.

My wife and I are too cheap to order a dish for computer connections
and cable may not make it out to our neck of the woods before I die,
and that's expensive too.

All other phoneline high speed options just aren't here yet because of
the demagraphics... few customers out in the woods.

Corky (dialup sucks) Scott

Jay,

I've got a 56k modem run through a network here at work. The pc that it's
actually attached to says it's connected at 52k. Your page came up
completely on my remote MS 2000 pc in 21.1 seconds. Your "hit counter" was
the last item to load, and it took about 8 of the 21.1 seconds.

As far as Flash and Java, most of the time if those scripts do not load fast
enough to suit me, I quickly turn to the competition. I can't stand that
stuff. Nothing a buisness has to offer it's customers is worth sitting
through that much nonsense. I don't need to sit through flying graphics or
a sparkly neon header before I can move on to the information that I
require. I think that the web designers or page owners that insist on that
type of stuff forget that customers want information, not entertainment.
With over 900 channels of television available, I don't need to be
entertained by a flashy Java webpage. Check out autopilots central.... very
annoying on a slow connection, even if it does have a "skip entry" button.
What kind of a nut writes a page thinking "Here are some real neat
graphics. I'm going to force you to see them first, then you can decide if
you want to really want to. If you don't want to see them, click here."
Backwards thinking in my book.

Onto online booking. This I use. A lot. I'd even (and probably do) pay
more for a hotel room if I can book it online. I trust an email
confirmation that I can print out more than a note jotted down while a
reservationist reads me a confirmation number that may or may not be valid.
Informative and knowledgeable reservationists are becoming a rarity. I've
found that the odds of ending up with the room next to the stairway,
elevator, ice machine, laundry room, outside entrance, or all night party
are far less when booking online. I know I could always ask not to be put
in one of those rooms, but odds are that the reservationist works for some
outside booking company without a map of the actual hotel. If the online
booking puts me in one of those rooms, I complain to the desk and because I
can blame it on the online booking, they are not insulted and usually
promptly move me. I realize that your hands on operation may be differant,
but I've had it with large hotel telephone reservations.

One question that you may ask yourself, is "How will people know that they
can book online?" I assume that you will be announceing the new capability
via your current advertiseing methods, but will you be listed with typical
hotel search and booking services?

Jim


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.799 / Virus Database: 543 - Release Date: 11/19/2004

One question that you may ask yourself, is "How will people know that they
can book online?" I assume that you will be announceing the new
capability
via your current advertiseing methods, but will you be listed with typical
hotel search and booking services?

Yes, going with real-time on-line booking with any of the big players
automatically gets you into the Expedias and Travelocity's.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 15:43:44 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

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!

snipped....

I have a T1 connection at work and dial-up at home. My modem is 56K,
although the connection speed is generally something less than that.
I can tell you from experience that surfing at home on dial-up isn't
nearly as horrible an experience as many make it out to be. The
problem is when I have to download files. I have booked hotels online
(from home) and it is not a hassle.

Everytime I think I would like broadband at home, I realize that every
month that is going to cost me a half-hour of flying time. I quickly
come to my senses and go flying.
Rich Russell

Richard Russell wrote:

Everytime I think I would like broadband at home, I realize that every
month that is going to cost me a half-hour of flying time.

With three of us using computers for an hour or more nearly every day, we would
need a second phone line if we used a dial-up connection. At a little over $37,
our DSL service is cheaper than having a second line and contracting with an
internet service provider like Earthlink.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

"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:
**************************************************
1. Does anyone know what the average speed modem is being used by the 70%
of
people still using dial-up?

I'm still on dialup (56K). Heck, I'm still on rabbit ears. I really only
regularly use the internet for email, so broadband wouldn't really be all
that advantagous. It would help with large attachments and software updates,
but I find ways around it and I have broadband at work. Where I live, the
only option right now is cable; no DSL. High speed internet is not a good
value for me, it doesn't fit my use profile.


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"?


I don't know much about these technologies, but I know a lot about using
them. I CAN'T STAND web designs which try desparately to be cool or fancy.
The ones with intro pages with stuff flying all over the place and
sounds/music drive me crazy not to mention the fact that they take too long
to load on my home machine. Also, if I am surfing at work, I avoid the
websites that are visually loud because they attract attention. Most really
professional websites are crisp, efficient and somewhat subdued.


An ON-LINE BOOKING question for the group, if you please:
**************************************************
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 use online bookings quite a bit. My dialup connection has nothing to do
with my ability to use the internet to reserve airline tickets, hotel rooms,
rental cars, or to simply buy things. I have done all these things many many
times. Compared to my high speed connection at work, it probably only takes
a couple of minutes longer for me to these operations at home vs.at work,
which isn't much.

If I have a special request, I like to use the phone. But even if I use the
phone, I go to Expedia (my favorite right now) and look up which hotels are
around the area that I am visiting, put them on a map and decide which
hotels I will consider due to proximity to my area of interest. I find that
if a hotel isn't in Expedia, I won't know it is there. One problem I find is
that sometimes Expedia doesn't give the local phone number of the hotel.
This is irritating. I will also use other hotel finders to see if I am
missing a good hotel, so I am not fixated on Expedia.

HTH,

-Trent
PP-ASEL