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

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.

Thanks for your help! (Your reward for helping me is getting to view this
goofy new video, forwarded to me by a British pilot. It's yet another in a
series of bizarre ads for Ford automobiles that apparently works to sell
cars in Britain. See it at:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...rd_sportka.wmv Here's
another one from the series, almost aviation related:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...s/BirdGone.mpg )
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

If the company my wife works for wasn't paying for it, I wouldn't pay to
have broadband via cable modem. Time Warner requires that you have
television service to obtain broadband service. There isn't anything on
cable television that I cannot do without. Broadband is nice to have,
but again, I can do without it if I have to pay the bill.

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?

Connection speed depends upon line quality. Even in the biggest of
cities, there are portions which have old (some might say ancient)
equipment which has not be upgraded since the last century. :-)
The number of requests for server access on dialup also affects speed,
just as on your cable modem.

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 like Java, it doesn't matter what platform you are using.
There are a number of sites that use MicroSquish software that will not
run on my Mac because I do not have MS Internet Explorer installed. They
even try to install the software!

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?

N/A (I have a cable modem)

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?

N/A

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?

I never use online booking. I always call the hotel directly and make my
arrangements or use a travel agent. I/they can negotiate a better price
directly than with an online booking agency.

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.

Most people are too lazy or ignorant about how to shop/search for travel
information and accommodations. A basic Google search is easy, but they
are clueless as to how to do a serious search to really identify what
exactly they are looking for.

I can't imagine any need for a hotel to have a site more complex than some
text and a few pictures, unless you do online reservations (to segue into
your other question). Leave the flash and javascript and applets for
something which could possibly benefit from them. Why hit counters? You
should be able to get stats from your host. Keep it simple and fast. Look
at ebay as an example; nothing but text, pictures and links.

As far as online reservations go, I use priceline. Hard to beat; I usually
get really nice rooms (Hilton) for $35-40 a night. If your hotel
participates in that network, great.

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


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

All modems shipped today are capable of at least 33.6. Line
conditions may not allow this, but connect rates of 28k or higher are
probably the norm.

-Nathan

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

really?

well, broadband availability is not that high - AFAIK esp in more rural
parts of the USA. we have an estimated 70% broadband availability here, but
this does not mean that those who can have it also use it. IMNSHO there are
about 10 to 20% private broadband users out there (from all potential
users), there might be a 50% broadband usage from all internet users.

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.


it is availability. (and costs). brodband most likely has fixed monthly
costs; users that only check their mails once every 2 days (or less) don't
have need for more than a modem or ISDN.

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
^^^^^^^^^

check the sources of your pages ....

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?


most like 56k - you then average at about 48.000 baud connections with
that.

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"?

content is what a website makes it cool (IMVHO)
JS and Flash makes it possible to execute code on your machine.

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

don't give too much on that counter. rely on the webstatistics you
hopefully receive from your hoster (most likely a link to a site)

www.AlexisParkInn.com if you want to take a gander at it.) How long is it
taking to open on your computer?


from Europe with broadband (!) access: about 10 seconds
with Java and JS disabled: about 3 seconds.

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.

install Firefox - at least give it a try. it is free.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Now the page runs normally, but I'm worried about having a website that
might actually freeze someone's computer.

to be on the save side: remove everything JS related.

Can anyone see anything on the
page that could have caused that? Or was it just a glitch in Mary's PC?


who knows? but most likely there are more PCs out there without all
available patches installed.

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.


significant? only for that? well, then this has to be a really good thing.

How many of you guys actually make real-time, on-line hotel reservations?

only speaking for me: when tavelling as a European tourist in the US (as a
pilot, for that matter) I only look up the area where I am travelling and
maybe check out some hotels in the area and call them when I am close to
them. For me, there are still to many college boys working the desk with
too little knowledge. (yes, generalising)

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

what are your sources?

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.

not internet usage or high-speed internet usage in general is the question.
the main question is: what is your target customer using? it's time for
profiling. :-)

Thanks for your help! (Your reward for helping me is getting to view this
goofy new video, forwarded to me by a British pilot. It's yet another in a
series of bizarre ads for Ford automobiles that apparently works to sell
cars in Britain. See it at:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...rd_sportka.wmv

this one is old. I doubt that it was used by Ford for advertising.

#m

--
The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free,
neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

In article QiFtd.157408$V41.134990@attbi_s52,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

I turn once again to you, the great internet gurus of aviation, for answers
to the mysteries of the web...

Well, website design and implementation is one of the things I do to eke
out a living, so take what follows with a grain of the appropriate
salt(s)...

[...]

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?

In my experience, 56K modems running at 28-32K. Shocking, I know :-).
Yes, I've had DSL for years.

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"?

All these technologies are neutral in terms of good and evil -- it's how
you use 'em that matters (and most people abuse them, or ate least abuse
Java and Flash).

Javascript -- which actually isn't much related to Java -- is very
useful, almost universally available and used, and quite lightweight,
and is used mostly for smallish effects (field format checking,
rollovers, etc.).

On the other hand, I try to steer clear of Java and or Flash unless I
can be certain the audience can cope, *and that the effect is
appropriate*. In your case, they'd seem a lot like overkill. The simpler
the better, if you ask me -- your splash page should say who you are,
what you do, how to get hold of you, why the potential customer would
want to do business with you, etc., in as compact and easily-digested
way as possible (one sentence for each point). No animations, etc.!

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?

It loaded instantly ... except for that damn counter, which took many
seconds. Why anybody puts counters on their websites I'll never know
(don't get me started :-)).

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.

No idea about this one...

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 use online hotel (etc.) booking all the time. Yes, with dialup it's a
pain, but it's still usually quicker and more convenient than phoning.

Thanks for your help! (Your reward for helping me is getting to view this
goofy new video, forwarded to me by a British pilot. It's yet another in a
series of bizarre ads for Ford automobiles that apparently works to sell
cars in Britain. See it at:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...rd_sportka.wmv Here's
another one from the series, almost aviation related:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...s/BirdGone.mpg )

Got to check this out :-)!

Hamish (remove the xyz's to get hold of me...).

Jay Honeck wrote:
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.

As others have said, availability is limited in a lot of areas. We've had
it available for a long time, but only made the switch to cable internet
about 6 months ago, so my wife could VPN to work. Up till then, I felt
that dialup was "good enough". Of course, I'm hooked to the internet all
day long at work. Our connection at the beach is still dialup, so I
don't surf much on weekends.


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!

I'm a big advocate of designing web sites for modem use. I feel that most
people don't really need to spend the extra money for broadband. If
broadband prices eventually drop to dialup levels and become universally
available, then that'll be a different situation. I maintain two small
web pages (http://www.oc-adolfos.com and http://www.oceancityairport.com)
and have intentially made them "simple" in order to allow faster loading
over dialup. I could have made them fancier, but why? They provide the
information I want to provide, and that's the important thing.


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 suspect the average 56K modem is connecting at somwhere between 33.6K
and 48K

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've been running my browsers with Java disabled for many years. It
hasn't seemed to effect the "quality" of my web browsing. I'm sure that
I'm missing an occasional animated applet, but I figure it's safer from a
security standpoint to disable it. I do allow javascript and flash, and
I realize that they could potentially cause similar problems (malicious
code), but I take the chance with those. As others have pointed out, the
probem with Java, javascript and flash is that the code is executing on
your computer, instead of the web server. Java applets and Flash also
have the secondary "problem" of sometimes being rather large downloads
into your computer, prior to executing (which is also a dialup concern).


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 rarely travel, but when I do, I book over the internet exclusively.

--- Jay




--
__!__
Jay and Teresa Masino ___(_)___
http://www2.ari.net/jmasino ! ! !
http://www.oceancityairport.com
http://www.oc-adolfos.com

You already got some good replies. Pay special attention to the "less is
more" vibe. And by that, I'm not just talking about bytes. Just because
you CAN make your website blink and jiggle, that doesn't mean you SHOULD.

As far as browser stability issues go, I ran into a problem recently where
Sun's Java plug-in was causing IE to crash. Unfortunately, it also wasn't
properly detecting and downloading the latest update. I had to uninstall
the plug-in and download the latest version manually. Thankfully, after all
that the crashing problem did go away with the latest version.

It's well and good if you want to switch browsers for your personal use --
nothing wrong with Firefox, as far as I know. But that's a red herring
here. Other people WILL be using IE, and not all instability/crashing
problems are IE's fault anyway (i.e. you could just as easily have them in
other browsers). By minimizing the "wiggle factor" of your web site, you'll
tend to stick to the more heavily tested areas of all browser code, and
likewise will tend to avoid the parts that cause crashes.

Finally, this was mentioned in another reply, but I just want to
reemphasize: download speed is affected by more than just the number of
bytes of your web page. Depending on how you're hosting it, you could be
sharing server CPU time and bandwidth with other Internet users, at the
server site or elsewhere. One would hope that for a person using dial-up,
the modem would be the limiting factor, but it's not always. It's well and
good to test your web site yourself, but be careful when trying to
extrapolate your own results to other people's experience.

As far as online booking goes: when we travel, we use the Internet almost
exclusively for research. But we book by phone. Call us old-fashioned.
That said, I'm not convinced using the phone is any more reliable; we've had
plenty of hotel screw-ups, from losing our reservation altogether to minor
snafus related to type and location of the room, even booking by phone. As
far as getting the best price goes, we're not huge fans of haggling; if
we're looking for the lowest price, the hotel who quotes the lowest price
unprompted gets the booking. So maybe we ought to consider booking
online...how much worse could it be?

Pete

"Jay Masino" wrote in message
...
[...] As others have pointed out, the
probem with Java, javascript and flash is that the code is executing on
your computer, instead of the web server.

Well, to be fair, this is true even of plain old HTML. Just because one
looks like an actual "program" while the other looks more like "data", that
doesn't mean they both don't have the same potential for abuse.

Security flaws almost never involve taking advantage of high-level execution
units (e.g. a Java interpreter). They generally involve getting data to be
copied to your computer in a way that causes the data to be executed. This
is potentially just as easy to do with HTML, JPEGs, or even text files as it
is with Java, Javascript, Flash, etc.

Inasmuch as disabling scripted content does reduce one's total exposure to
downloaded data, doing so can reduce your risk exposure. But it's not
because the content is a "program" versus "data". It's just that you're
downloading less data, and fewer different kinds of data.

Pete

"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!


Was that for the US or for the internet as a whole?

Mike
MU-2