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

"Jose" wrote in message

The business owner and web
designer think they are cool. Nobody else does. I skip them totally.

Your personal feelings towards these types of sites does not reality make.
I've seen plenty of well done, flashy, java-ed sites and have designed
plenty as well. One of my (and a lot of other folks) faves is
www.space.com. You may loathe it but I think it's a very well done site for
the type of material it is devoted to.

A side-line of by business is web design. The site owners - my customer -
sees the flashy stuff out there and wants it. My designers must accommodate
the customer's wishes.

We sometimes try to talk customers out of certain things like flash intros,
pop-ups and ESPECIALLY playing a sound on page load (I hate that crap!) but
the customer wants flashy stuff sometimes and flashy stuff is what he will
get.

What we usually end up with is a decently clean, uncluttered, quick-loading
site that has a little flash and mostly HTML (example at www.fpard.com).
Then there are customers who want nothing but flash because of the perceived
cool-quotient and won't be convinced otherwise. I gladly provide it.

It is simply reality that most of us small-time authors could care less what
the end user wants. We aim to please the person who is footing the bill.

--
Jim Fisher

Your personal feelings towards these types of sites does not reality make.
I've seen plenty of well done, flashy, java-ed sites

You mean my opinion doesn't control the world?

Yes, flash and java have their place. Just not on the front page. Of
anything. So often I got to a movie home page and it's flashed to the
hilt; I just skip it. I want to (say) read a synopsis, not watch a PR
piece on the movie company (and when I do want to watch a trailer, I'm
happy to click the "trailer" button and do the flash thing if that's
what it takes)

A side-line of by business is web design. The site owners - my customer -
sees the flashy stuff out there and wants it. My designers must accommodate
the customer's wishes. [...]
the customer wants flashy stuff sometimes and flashy stuff is what he will
get.

.... and that's what I'm saying. It's all about the business owner, or
client, not about the visitor.

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

"Jay Honeck" wrote

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"?



NOT FLASHMEDIA ! ! !

I know I just shouted, but I wanted to get your attention. I WILL NOT allow
flash media to reside on my computers. It is a waste of bandwidth, to have
a stupid ad come up, animated and all, then have *to wait* for it to be
done, or try to find the X to shut it off. It does have to have its own
software loaded, but you already knew that, I suppose.
--
Jim in NC

NOT FLASHMEDIA ! ! !

I know I just shouted, but I wanted to get your attention. I WILL
NOT allow flash media to reside on my computers. It is a waste of
bandwidth, to have a stupid ad come up, animated and all, then have
*to wait* for it to be done, or try to find the X to shut it off.

I'm pretty sure you are describing javascript ads.

"John Harlow" wrote in message
...
NOT FLASHMEDIA ! ! !

I know I just shouted, but I wanted to get your attention. I WILL
NOT allow flash media to reside on my computers. It is a waste of
bandwidth, to have a stupid ad come up, animated and all, then have
*to wait* for it to be done, or try to find the X to shut it off.

I'm pretty sure you are describing javascript ads.

I doubt it. When I went through and deleted any file that said anything
with flash on it, they stopped.

I had only loaded it on one computer, against my better judgment, to see one
specific site that would not work without flash. It didn't take me long to
remember why I hated it, and delete it again.
--
Jim in NC

Jay Honeck wrote:

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

56K is generally the modem speed. Line speed is usually slower.

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 an interpreter (as opposed to a compiled language like C), so execution
is relatively slow. Applets run faster than scripts, but each applet also has to
be downloaded, as is any file or other resource the applet needs. From *your*
viewpoint, you should be using Java applets for anything that requires input
from the customer or display of items that you do not want automated snoopers to
be able to see. You should be using *well written* HTML for anything that you
want web crawlers to pick up and store for search engines. You also should use
HTML for the links to other pages you want web crawlers to read (and you have
this on your home page). A good crawler will also pick stuff out of Java script,
but not all do.

Photos are another thing that slows a page down, and they also hide information
from automated snoopers. Java is preferable to Flash, since many people either
can't or won't put Flash on their computers.

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?

I have a DSL line, but it takes 10 seconds or so with IE. Surprisingly, it loads
in about 4 seconds with a obsolete version of Netscape but doesn't display
perfectly. The difference *does* seem to be the counter. Looking at the page
source, you're accessing another web site to get that counter. That's going to
slow things down a lot, and the amount of the delay is not going to be
predictable.

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?

I don't see anything offhand.

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 never do. My wife did so one time about 4 years ago through one of those web
sites that claims to (and in our case, did) get you sizeable discounts at
hotels. We stay in hotels perhaps five nights a year. Sometimes we don't get
reservations at all -- just stop when we get tired.

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

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!

I would suggest keeping the site simple enough that it doesn't require huge
amounts of bandwidth to display this week, even if huge amounts of bandwidth are
actually available. That is the art of web design, keeping the site useful and
attractive while keeping bandwidth and processsing requirements down. Even in
the age of faster computers and networks, efficiency is still king.

If you want to employ special features (including extensive Flash) that require
more bandwidth , do so by all means, but they can be an optional part of the
webpage that is somehow marked as requiring more bandwidth.

Be careful not to confuse Java (a compiled language which requires a virtual
machine [translation: more computer resources]) and Javascript. For example, I
tend to keep Java disabled since it slows me down when I don't expect it, but
almost always keep Javascript enabled. I turn on Java if/when there is a good
reason to.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message 1. Does anyone know what the average speed
modem is being used by the 70% of people still using dial-up?

I use dial-up because I can access the internet everywhere I travel. Speeds
run the spectrum from 24k to 48k. Some hotels have free high-speed which I
take advantage of. Some hotels charge for high-speed access which I thumb my
nose at with dial-up.

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

Don't know about hotels, but the airline I work for averages about 60% of
reservations by internet.

D.

I use dial-up because I can access the internet everywhere I travel.
Speeds
run the spectrum from 24k to 48k. Some hotels have free high-speed which I
take advantage of. Some hotels charge for high-speed access which I thumb
my
nose at with dial-up.

We were the first in our market to offer high speed wireless internet access
throughout the hotel (thanks to the folks on this very newsgroup!) -- and we
NEVER charge for it.
--
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:

Hey Jay,

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

56K would be the best speed one can get on dialup, but in reality, 44K to
52K is what I get on my laptop.

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?

Took less then three seconds on my DSL hookup. I get 300K per second
download.

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 would never book a hotel online AGAIN. I did this once, printed out the
confirmation number, and showed up at 1:00 p.m. and hotel was booked solid.

I would have understood had I been real late arriving, but I did confirm
with my credit card to allow for a late arrival. Because it was a small
town in Mississippi, I ended up going 15 miles to another town to get
overnight accomodations.

I also found out, the "Central" reservation computer of this hotel does not
always interface timely with the local hotel computers, that causes
overbookings as well.

Allen