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

What you are saying (and in some of your responses to comments) is that
you are
buying advertising and marketing to publicize the hotel and, hopefully,
get more
bookings. You are not buying just online reservation. You need to price
what
it would take to just use a reservation package on your own site and
subtract
that from your "contract" price. Then you can determine if the
advertising you
are putting out (the amount left after subtracting) is what you want to
spend
and will it get you the return you want (amount of additional bookings you
want
to have).

I looked into "stand-alone" software packages that would allow me to do
real-time on-line booking from my own website -- and the price was WAY
higher than contracting with the big players in the market. And I'm not
talking a little higher -- I'm talking like 500 to 1000% higher.

And I'd STILL not be in the global distribution system (which gets you into
all of the travel agent's computers) or on Expedia and Travelocity.
--
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.

My old homepage took (according to Frontpage's estimate) over two MINUTES to
load on a 28.8 modem! The new "flash screen" gets people into the site
almost instantly,

If the "welcome to the inn" is basically your old home page, there's
really nothing visible on the page that =should= take that long.
However, each thumbnail is 10K or so. That's 130K right there, and
the pics are small enough they don't have to be that big. You could
probably squeeze them to 2K apiece (I just did it to the tiny red
baron, it looked fine and I was working from an already processed
image, which makes it look worse). The FrontPage navigation bar on
the left uses 2K per button of derived images for a total of 40K, and
probably preloads even more. It adds up. The text isn't all that
much, but the HTML for the scripts and preloads is.

KISS and you can shrink the page to something that loads faster than
your present splash screen.

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

Just tried the Inn's website, Jay; in Opera 7.23 it took about 10sec to
load; it seemed to 'pause', then deliver the whole page at once, rather
than loading things sequentially like most pages do.

Not sure why the delay; that big image is actually fairly low-res and
small, and the rest is almost all text.

if you want to dump the javascripted nav bars in the top left, you can do
great, cross-browser things with Cascading Style Sheets & link styling, to
replicate most of your nav bar's fiddly bits without any Java or
Javascript at all.

The cool thing about CSS styling is that even in non-CSS-capable browsers
(ie older browsers, or PDAs & Blackberries, etc) the links will just come
out as plain text, so they'll still be totally useable!

See my aviation page (www.warbard.ca/avgas/index.html) and look at the
small nav bar right below the title block - that's all CSS, but it's got
'animated' features.

Brian.

--

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"

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...

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

Almost all dial-up modems sold today will be the 56K bps, but will generally
not approach that because of telelphone line noise. For instance, I am
connected at 44K on such a modem. Your main page took 16 seconds to load -
not bad. Since most modems have error correction, if line noise causes an
error the packet (information is broken down in small packets which are sent
individually) is sent again, so you don't necessarily even achieve the
modem-to-line correct rate. So a _lot_ is dependent on line purity and this
can change from connection to connection from the same computer - yell at
the telephone company to repair it. haahaa

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 is usually, but not always, faster than applets because of their
loading time. But the _important_ thing is to have the Java written in
_standard_ code, ala Sun, and not an abortion of that code conceived by M$
which will only run on their machines. As a business you are shooting
yourself in the foot if the stuff only runs on M$ machines. (Some of us use
_real_ operating systems. grin) And while I am at it, the same goes for
the html code in the web page itself - same principle. M$ departed from the
standard code with 'special' effects and if those are used they may not work
correctly on other browsers, ala Firefox, Opera, Netscape, etc. So industry
standard html code should only be used.

scripting? How about "Flashmedia"?

Can be good if loading time is not excessive. Music causes huge loading times.
Flash must be handled well because of this.

3. I have pared our opening page back to practically nothing, yet it STILL
~
www.AlexisParkInn.com if you want to take a gander at it.) How long is it

See #1.

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

Have used it with my dial-up successfully but don't always book that way.
Sometimes you can save by online booking.

Still warm feelings from the great time at your pre-OSH celebration this
summer and visiting with you and Mary at OSH.

....Edwin (the blue/white Maule)

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Edwin Johnson ....... ~
~ http://www.shreve.net/~elj ~
~ ~
~ "Once you have flown, you will walk the ~
~ earth with your eyes turned skyward, ~
~ for there you have been, there you long ~
~ to return." -- da Vinci ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still warm feelings from the great time at your pre-OSH celebration this
summer and visiting with you and Mary at OSH.

Same here, Edwin! It was a really, really great summer.

Looks like we'll be throwing the "Pre-OSH Pool Party" on a Saturday night in
'05, since EAA is now starting AirVenture on a Monday. That should make
things even more fun for those who wish to partake in some of Iowa City's
college night life!

(BTW: Playboy is in town this week, looking for their first "corn-fed" Iowa
Playmate. This comes after the news was published that Iowans are their #1
customers, per capita. It's fun to watch all the feminist groups go
apoplectic -- while all the girls line up in droves to participate! ;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

As I live in an area with "ancient" equipment, I am stuck with dialup
at home. I have a 56K modem... and my normal connect is at 22K, never
above 28K. No, the cable company does not supply high speed in my
(small) neighborhood. So, I do my high-speed access from the airport
office... when I am not flying. :-)

Jer/ Eberhard

Nathan Young wrote:
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



Best regards,

Jer/ "Flight instruction and mountain flying are my vocation!" Eberhard

--
Jer/ (Slash) Eberhard, Mountain Flying Aviation, LTD, Ft Collins, CO
CELL 970 231-6325 EMAIL jer'at'frii.com WEB http://users.frii.com/jer/
C-206 N9513G, CFII Airplane&Glider, FAA-DEN Aviation Safety Counselor
CAP-CO Mission&Aircraft CheckPilot, BM218 HAM N0FZD, 221 Young Eagles!

"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.

What suite(s) are Playboy using for the Hangar Queen shots? :-)