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

Jose wrote:

Java is executable code. Executable code can be harmful so many
people turn it off.

Java is not executable code. Java is interpreted code. It can be irritating
(like popups that won't go away), but it cannot be harmful. Unsigned Java
applets are not allowed to access most of the memory of your computer (the
phrase is that they "run in the sandbox"), they aren't allowed to access the
file system, and they can't establish a network connection with any server
except the one you got it from.

Signed applets can do some of these things, but you have to explicitly give the
server permission to download them every time you download one. Signing for one
of these can allow damaging software on your machine.

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

Java is not executable code. Java is interpreted code. It can be irritating
(like popups that won't go away), but it cannot be harmful.

This is a fine point that is important in some contexts. However, it
is code. It causes your machine to do something interactive (granted,
at the behest of the interpreter). It can certainly be harmful - a
trivial example is a popup loop that crashes the machine. Similarly,
Microsoft Word documents with scripts built in are also interpreted,
but can carry viruses and trojans.

I turn the stuff off.

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

Morgans wrote:

Set up the online "Specific Suite Booking", so that the confirmation is
not
guaranteed until an e-mail is sent back, say, 15 minutes later. That will
give you time to check with the phone booking, and send back to the online
guy saying, "yep you have it for sure". Be sure to put a privacy clause
saying that no unsolicited e-mails will be sent, and that no one else will
have access to their e-mail address.

And if they enter an incorrect email, or some other problem prevents this
email from succeeding?

At a minimum, you'll need a "check back with us" URL. And this still leaves
you exposed if someone changes their mind and then says "oh, I didn't
receive your email".

It's a classic: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/byzantine.html

- Andrew

Jay Honeck wrote:

I just won't know how likely it is to happen until we go "live" with it.

The likelihood of this happening is 100%. The only uncertain thing is how often
it will happen. We studied airline booking systems for database management
classes. Based on the rough info provided there, you're going to have real
problems during the busy periods (like football season).

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

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
Doesn't IE support that? If not, what is the function of
ToolsInternet OptionsAdvancedEnable Automatic Image Resizing?

I don't know how Firefox's version of that feature works, but for IE, the
image will only be resized if it's just an image file (i.e. the URL has a
..jpg, .gif, etc. extension, not .html). Images that are part of a web page
do not get resized.

"Jose" wrote in message
m...
One trick you can use is to break the picture up vertically into smaller
elements that are just placed right next to each other, and then when the
window is resized, they can just pile up. It's messy when the user does
that, but it makes the site more usable.

More usable? How does it do that? Seems to me, as long as you author the
site so that no text is situated to the off-window side of an image larger
than the window, that it would be better to just have part of the image not
visible than to have little chunks of it cluttering up the screen.

In any case, for anyone that does do this, make sure you test your
formatting at various text sizes. I've seen too many sites that break a
single image into parts, only to have them not line up when the page is
viewed with different font size settings than those used to author the page
(most commonly, there winds up being gaps between the image parts).

Pete

"Jose" wrote in message
m...
This is a fine point that is important in some contexts. However, it is
code. It causes your machine to do something interactive (granted, at the
behest of the interpreter). It can certainly be harmful - a trivial
example is a popup loop that crashes the machine.

I have seen loops that clutter up my desktop, but never had one crash my
computer. I just bring up task manager (which is always a top-level
window), and kill the iexplore.exe process). All the popped up windows go
away, no fuss no muss.

Of course, now I use a browser that blocks pop-ups altogether, so that's
just not an issue. In any case, I believe that George's point was simply
that Java in and of itself doesn't allow an unsigned applet to do anything
that could be permanently harmful to your computer.

Similarly, Microsoft Word documents with scripts built in are also
interpreted, but can carry viruses and trojans.

Terrible comparison. Word's macro language is basically Visual Basic, and
includes all sorts of "dangerous" stuff, including file i/o. Even so, all
of the Word macro viruses I've heard of infect only other Word documents,
and are trivial to block (just turn off macros for Word). They are only
dangerous as long as you aren't aware you're infected.

Word macros and unsigned Java applets have very little in common with each
other.

Pete

More usable? How does [breaking up an image] do that?
Seems to me, as long as you author the
site so that no text is situated to the off-window side of an image larger
than the window, that it would be better to just have part of the image not
visible than to have little chunks of it cluttering up the screen.

I said it's a messy solution; the best solution is to smallify the
picture or eliminate it.

I don't know what's on the right side of the picture until I look
there. I have to scroll. There may be buttons, navigation elements,
who knows? And I also don't know that there's nothing way below the
picture but also off to the right, especially in a table. I've seen
it many times.

The user doesn't really care about the picture. They want the info.

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

Terrible comparison. Word's macro language is basically Visual Basic

Visual Basic is interpreted, which was the point being made about Java
scripts.

I have seen loops that clutter up my desktop, but never had one crash my
computer. I just bring up task manager (which is always a top-level
window), and kill the iexplore.exe process). All the popped up windows go
away, no fuss no muss.

Some loops cause a new instance of Explorer each time, and they pile
up faster than you can click them away, let alone give the three
finger salute.

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

"Andrew Gideon" wrote

And if they enter an incorrect email, or some other problem prevents this
email from succeeding?


Read again what I wrote. It said

Set up the online "Specific Suite Booking", so that the confirmation is
not
guaranteed until an e-mail is sent back, say, 15 minutes later.

*Concentrate* on the part that says that confirmation is not guaranteed
until the e-mail is received. That means if they do not get an e-mail, they
don't have anywhere to stay yet, and had better follow up to see what the
problem is.

If no contact is made because they can not enter their own e-mail address
correctly, they don't need to be booking online.

I guess if the online booking is through expedia, or whatever, Jay may not
have the option of adding little things like what I suggested, anyway.
--
Jim in NC