Something's wrong with this one...

[ElyseC]

A friend just pointed me to the site of a restaurant (http://www.mariahsrestaurant.com/) where we're supposed to meet on our next trip to Springfield IL. She tells me there's all sorts of info about the place, but all I get -- in both Safari and Firefox -- is a static, unclickable photo against a gradated brown background. Huh? Does the site work for anyone else? Are they yet another clueless, Windows-centric bunch?

[Mike]

I get just the same in Safari but with Explorer 5.2 for the Mac I get an intro to the site with a bird flying in and links to other pages appearing. Mind you, it's not an experience worth waiting for.

Menu looks quite interesting if you're not a vegetarian. Hope you enjoy the meal.

[Kelvyn]

This dreadful site uses a whole load of JavaScript and works only with Internet Explorer 6 and earlier. It does not work with modern browsers. The whole site is in images or pdf - the dinner menu is here (http://www.mariahsrestaurant.com/art/menu/dinner.pdf).

[annc]

A friend just pointed me to the site of a restaurant (http://www.mariahsrestaurant.com/) where we're supposed to meet on our next trip to Springfield IL. She tells me there's all sorts of info about the place, but all I get -- in both Safari and Firefox -- is a static, unclickable photo against a gradated brown background.It's a site for IE users only. I tried it in both Safari on the Mac and Firefox on my Windows laptop, with the same result.

There's no DOCTYPE statement, and the scripting language appears to be something really strange.

I did try it with IE6 on the Windows laptop, but it brought up a heap of stuff that moves around, with a vulture as the linking feature. And clicking on various menus brought up the same one each time, along with a lot of other menus. Then I gave up, mostly because it was really ugly.

Oh, and if you click on the link to the map, you get the dreaded IE 'The page cannot be found', which in this case is a 404.

I'd avoid them like the plague and tell them why.

[Richard Waller]

It is called an Entrance Tunnel, and is definitely a poor idea. They really ought to get the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) right up front. But I expect the food is superb.

[ElyseC]

Menu looks quite interesting if you're not a vegetarian. Hope you enjoy the meal.Vegetarians could have salad and pasta without chicken, fish or red meat, but vegans would probably be out of luck.

[ElyseC]

I'd avoid them like the plague and tell them why.I can't avoid them unless I want to dine by myself (on foot searching for something else) while 50+ other people in my group are all together. I will try to spot someone there with some authority and who might have a clue to things webbish and tell them I wouldn't have known anything of the place and would have passed them by had I been the one in charge of finding a place to take our group.

Did you see that the PDF menu is over 10MB??? What regular customer is going to be happy downloading that monster?

[ElyseC]

This dreadful site uses a whole load of JavaScript and works only with Internet Explorer 6 and earlier. It does not work with modern browsers. The whole site is in images or pdf - the dinner menu is here (http://www.mariahsrestaurant.com/art/menu/dinner.pdf).And it's 10MB+ to boot! Created with Acrobat CS2 for Windows with "fast web viewing" enabled makes me think that the owners themselves created it, no experienced talent involved. They probably thought that's all they needed to do, turn on "fast web view" and the PDF would be neat and tiny enough.

[ElyseC]

It is called an Entrance Tunnel, and is definitely a poor idea. They really ought to get the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) right up front.Oh definitely! They probably think the look of the place is a good enough selling point. You know, "build it and they will come."

But I expect the food is superb.Two people I know from our group have eaten there, I guess, and swear it's good. We'll see. I'll be opting for some kind of pasta, myself, and that's pricey enough.

[annc]

I'm not sure how you will tell by sight if someone in authority looks webbish, :) but a word in the ear of the manager could have some result. Even a print of the home page as it appeared, with an explanation that you could get no further, could help.

[ElyseC]

I'm not sure how you will tell by sight if someone in authority looks webbish, :) but a word in the ear of the manager could have some result. Even a print of the home page as it appeared, with an explanation that you could get no further, could help.Well, a manager is what I meant I'd be trying to find. :) Good idea about printing the page I get and using that for a visual aid.

[Bo Aakerstrom]

I'm not sure how you will tell by sight if someone in authority looks webbish, :)
And you would be looking for the wrong person...
I think this is what happens when a non-webbish person makes a web site.