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Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/4/1998 9:13:00 AM
From: Roger Arquilla	Respond to of 16892

I agree with many of the comments of other traders regarding the new web site. The new one may be improved in regards to research, but the old one is far more functional from a traders standpoint. Straight forward and precise. Pull down menus are a pain when all you want to do is place a buy or sell. Please don't remove the old site option.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/4/1998 9:54:00 AM
From: Kulnor	Respond to of 16892

Peter, Could you add a & nbsp; in the change column of the quote table when the value is 0. If the cell is empty, it creates a white space. Thanks P2

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/4/1998 10:22:00 AM
From: Candle stick	Respond to of 16892

Peter, odd problem....on the old classic site I still use server 7....I recently upgraded to Netscape 4.04 from 3.0 version. Now, when I use the tab button to go across the fields to enter an order, instead of jumping directly from the 'buy/sell' box to the 'quantity' box the cursor stops on the word "Quantity" first requiring me to hit the 'tab' button again to move to the empty field. the same occurs in every field where there is a word above the entry box.....it only does this with 4.04 version and takes a lot longer to enter an order now........? what's up? any ideas on how to change this? Thanks for leaving us the 'classic server 7'.........;^)

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/4/1998 10:29:00 AM
From: Fridrik Skulason	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

> The old charts and account options links have been removed from the "classic" sites. How brilliant! It is nice to see how much you care about your customers...It must have taken a real genius to decide to remove that before a working replacement was in place. > New and better charts and account option links will be added within 2 weeks. So until then you want me to go elsewhere for charts and such ? Or do you want them to take their entire business elsewhere ? > In the mean-time, please use the new enhanced site for charts, news, research, and more. 1) As mentioned in some other messages here, your new site does not yet work properly for everyone - in particular, every one of the pup-up menus I have been able to access is unreadble, as I just get black text on black background, and I do not seem to be the only one with that problem. (And yes, I have been careful telling Netscape to reload each page) So, even if I wanted to use your new site, I cannot - it is utterly unusable to me. 2) Even if the pages were readable, they are just too big, and take too long to load. They may seem fast to you, but then I guess you have not tried to access them from halfway across the globe.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/4/1998 11:14:00 AM
From: Peter H. Hodge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Think I have read something about this, but today I have been unable to short CFON at 5 1/16 when the bid was 5 1/32 and ask 5 1/8. Message says... "unable to short on a downtick at the bid". If the problem is that Datek cannot read prices in 32nds, will that be fixed soon? It seems that it is not an ISLD problem as one of the bidders at the time was ISLD at 5 1/32.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/4/1998 6:18:00 PM
From: clochard	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

The new servers are very fast....maybe for you since you are connected via ethernet directly to them, but for us out of state folk, we are out of luck...All that Java takes time, and when you're hopping through 11 nodes all the way to Jersey, things really start to suck. You need to set up an arrangement with an out of state ISP and dial in with a modem, then you will understand why everyone likes the old, simple, non Java, no fannying about, unenhanced, down to business, reliable servers.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/5/1998 12:10:00 AM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Peter, some more suggestions: [warning to non-webheads - technical content!] The order frame is pretty bloated with <FONT> statements, <BGCOLOR> statements, ALIGN options, Javascript, and the like. (But mostly <FONT> statements!) MOST of this would go away by using a style sheet. It seems to me that most of the people who are going to go in for this flashy stuff are going to have the latest wizzy 4.0 browsers. If you make that assumption, you can take out a lot of the bloat by using a style sheet. (But please, please, attach the style sheet, do not embed it in the frame!) While it may not be that noticible to individuals, unless they are on a slow connection, I believe that you can take out something like 75% of the bytes in this frame (probably more like 80-90%) by using an attached style sheet. This means perhaps a 75% reduction in bandwidth utilization in aggregate for the site vs the way it's currently coded. I think we'd all appreciate the outcome of that improvement. Your Javascript should also be put in a separate file - use <SCRIPT SRC="blahblah.js"> instead of embedding the Javascript. (Although you don't have a whole lot of Javascript in there right now, so that will not gain you as much as the style sheet.) Alternately, if for some reason you don't like the <SCRIPT SRC=...> approach, you can put all of your Javascript functions in the main frame (e.g. the one that defines the frameset). You then reference them as "parent.blah()". Of course, this comes at the expense of a lot of unnecessary "parent." in your "on" statements. SRC= really is better, but does lose compatability with Netscape 2.x. People with pre-4.0 Netscape browsers and with pre-3.0 MSIE browsers will see plain text in their default font, but I don't think that's so terrible - they want the flash, let em' upgrade! Plus you gain some very nice things by using an attached style sheet: 1. You can have separate style sheets for MSIE 4.0, MSIE 3.0, Netscape 4.0, etc. etc. so that you can optimize the appearance in each. 2. You could even have special style sheets for special needs, that could be selected in the user preferences. You could have the "coke bottle" style for those that need big fonts, the "magnifying glass" style for those who like a lot of stuff packed in a small space, and the "neon glow" style for those that REALLY like flash. Seriously, you want real cool WITH functionality, give us a "gallery" where we can choose between various style sheets, and everybody should be happy. If you don't want to do this on the server-side, you could easily select from a (limited) number of style sheets in client-side Javascript using a cookie value. I'd suggest a single-character suffix to the style sheet base name, which gives you plenty of variations. This could be coded quite tersely in Javascript. 3. Even if you don't go to the extreme of user-selectable style sheets, at least you gain the ability to instantly change the look of the entire interface by changing just the style sheet(s). The style sheet gets downloaded ONCE and then gets referenced from the browser's cache. Almost ALL of the style-related HTML can then go away - most of the markup that is left should be structure-related - the original intent of HTML. (You'll still have to do the superscript/subscript diddling for the fractions, unless you want to use <SPAN class=...> tags, which of course will take more space than the <SUP></SUP> tags you are using now. But with a style sheet, you can precisely control exactly how you want superscripts and subscripts to look. For example, you could make them use a smaller font, without the need for a bunch of <FONT> tags.) The speed IS vastly improved over a couple of days ago when I tried this. It seems that something was just misconfigured on the server at that time, because it was taking FOR-EVER to get any page from the new servers.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/5/1998 9:55:00 AM
From: Larry Voyles	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Even with so many people claiming to hate the "new" format, the enhanced servers sure are busy. Can you switch another box over from old to new, Petey? I've become really addicted to the flash and fluff.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/9/1998 9:15:00 AM
From: Gorak Shep	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16892

Peter, quotes on orders2 - the NEW classic - appear to be trying to put the quotes above the buttons et al (thanks) but the html is REALLY broken. Please check it out.

To: Peter Stern who wrote (6640)	2/9/1998 10:50:00 AM
From: Larry Voyles	Respond to of 16892

Anybody else having authentication problems on portfolio and daily activity buttons on the "enhanced" system? I can pull quotes as much as I like, but I started receiving authentication errors on orders9. I didn't do any detailed experiments to see what else is broken, I had to switch over to a "classic" server to place a sell before I lost the ranch.