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

In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" said:
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"?

Java is only "evil" because Microsoft so ****ed up their version of it
(intentionally, I might add) so that it's damn hard to write Java that
works right on more than one version of IE and also works with browsers
that weren't written by complete morons. Plus Sun shouldn't have released
it until they had the Just In Time compiler - it was too slow at first.

Javascript is "evil" because the people who designed it gave no thought to
security. It's also evil because they used the word "Java" in spite of it
have absolutely no relationship to Java.

Flash is "evil" because most people who use it overuse the hell out of it.
Unless the service you are selling is your graphic design skills or your
"coolness", you do not need a fancy graphic splash screen, especially not
one with sound. Plus, if you use Flash or Java (or even Javascript to a
lesser extent) to navigate, you will exclude search engines from properly
indexing your site, exclude the disabled whose screen readers won't be
able to handle it, and exclude a lot of people who don't use the latest
flashiest web browsers because they have this quaint old notion that the
web is about information, not flashiness.

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?

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

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.

It just pegged the CPU on my Linux box and I had to kill my browser to get
back control of my box. What the hell are you doing on that first page?

I'm guessing it's the traffic counter applet. What do you need that for?
Can't you just get the web site logs from your hosting company?


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
If God meant man to fly, He'd have given him more money.

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?

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

??? I've pared the opening page down to being just a collage picture, and
not much else.

What is "gigantic" about it?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

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.

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

Thanks for the great input.

Funny thing is, I thought I *had* fixed the horizontal scrolling problem by
setting the table sizes to a percentage (80%) rather than a fixed width.
I'll have to check that out.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:mcStd.466936$wV.221480@attbi_s54...
Hope this helps. Horizontal scrolling is a big negative in a web site,
and should be fixed.

Thanks for the great input.

Funny thing is, I thought I *had* fixed the horizontal scrolling problem
by setting the table sizes to a percentage (80%) rather than a fixed
width. I'll have to check that out.

We had this discussion before. Pictures on your web site negate any other
attempt to format based on window size. The browser has no way to
"line-wrap" a picture...a picture is as wide as it is, and if it's wider
than the browser window, you'll have to scroll horizontally to see it all.

Nothing you do to the formatting elsewhere will change this.