Shopped
If, as Mark Price mentioned in his article (Online November 16), some retailers have had so little success with online shopping that they have withdrawn from the market, Tesco seems to be suffering from the opposite problem.
I use the Tesco Direct service, but after a frustrating experience today I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth the hassle. It took seemingly endless attempts before I could place an order.
This morning I either couldn't log on at all, or having logged on, couldn't access my list of previous purchases. This afternoon things were slightly better, in that I could access the list and order, but these stubbornly refused to appear in the basket.
When I did finally succeed, by a fluke, in persuading the system to accept that there were items in my basket, it needed several attempts before I managed to pay and get an acknowledgement.
If I, as a computer literate person, had so much difficulty, how many others simply gave up? Until retailers take e-commerce seriously, they are likely to be treated with suspicion by most customers, and justifiably so.
Richard Williams
rwilliams79@compuserve.com
Mark Price has hit on one of the problems that prevent people shopping on the net, but not all. I've been using PCs since 1986, went online with Compuserve in the late 1980s, have internet access both at home and work - and hardly ever bother to connect these days. And I wouldn't dream of shopping on the net.
Why? Not just because it's slow and not just because of the sheer amount of drivel, but mainly because websites appear to be designed by geeks for geeks: why use a single, simple, logical form when 10 - complete with dancing logos and a five-minute wait for the unnecessary .gifs to download - will bugger it up properly? Add to this the fact that fraud is rampant and that the vast majority of firms getting involved in e-commerce haven't a clue about security, and you begin to understand that it's still the wild west out there.
Of course, there's also the problem of actually getting your hands on the goods. Late last year I argued with my geeky friends (whose Christmas trees arrived in January) that not only was e-commerce's support infrastructure lacking, but that it was a paradise for crooks.
And quite apart from all that, there's no touchy-feely and no finding the marked-down bargains that actually makes shopping interesting rather than perfunctory.
Tony Slinn
tonyslinn@uk.dmgworldmedia.com
Packet mix
Richard Sarson hasn't quite got the full story.
Paul Baran, the American, was the first to conceive the idea of packet-switching, but Donald Davies, the Briton, first coined the phrase "packet-switching".
Many others, besides Baran, Davies and Berners Lee also contributed to the development of the internet. The wonderful book by my colleague John Naughton, A Brief History Of The Future, provides a summary.
Naughton points out that competition in the market place played very little part in the development of the internet, and that none of these contributors was motivated primarily by money.
Ray Thomas
r.thomas@open.ac.uk
Email advice
Dermod Quirke thinks Online is wrong to advise on secure internet use at work, believing this will only be used to send infantile emails or download porn.
Of course some employees may abuse IT facilities, just as they did phones or photocopiers. However, employees may need confidential contact with managers, human resources departments, occupational health, colleagues or union reps etc. You'd hope to talk to them privately at work without being videotaped. You'd expect to be able to phone them up without being eavesdropped. Why should the internet be different?
Firms that respond to a few incidents by preventing all employees from exploring, using and benefiting from the net are short-sighted. If reasonable internet use is banned, good employees circumvent the rules, or leave.
Some employers are developing policies to define acceptable IT use, and control surveillance at work. Unfortunately, many employers are struggling to keep up with the net, so their employees need your advice on the risks.
Ian Allinson
ian.allinson@iname.com
Clean code
Chris Gibson says HTML editors are rubbish (Feedback November 16). His remarks might apply to Microsoft's Frontpage but Macromedia's Dreamweaver 3 produces clean HTML and includes Javascript as well. Non-techies like me can create very reasonable web pages and people like Chris Gibson can use it to speed up some routine processes and then take over manually when they wish to put in their own code. Gavin Bullock
gavin.bullock@dial.pipex.com
I am a tyro granny-geek who is equally incompetent in HTML scripting and Frontpage. I feel that my experiences will stretch the motoring analogy beyond its elastic limit.
My programming forays are usually of the "Granny Engulfed in Fast Lane Juggernaut Pile-up Fireball Horror" variety.
On occasion I tinker under the HTML bonnet and manage to avoid a full-scale emergency services turn-out. However, when I've finally put everything back together I always seem to have pieces (see www.btinternet.com/~Learn2Live/General/PhotoAlbum4.htm) left over!
Jinty Batkins
jbatkins@altavista.com
Netscape bug
I read your report on the final release version of Netscape 6 with interest. Actually using Netscape 6 tells another story.
I encountered many problems. Despite its supposedly improved layout engine, Gecko, Netscape 6 makes a mess of style sheets (if it detects them at all), refuses to display layers correctly and mangles Javascript menus. Not to mention the continual crashing.
It seems Netscape has been so keen to incorporate gimmicks like skins and sidebars it forgot to produce a browser that actually works with the majority of web pages.
Don't believe the hype.
Ed Piper
aqua2@btconnect.com
