On 26/04/2005, at 12:03 PM, Ronda Brown wrote:
Hi WAMUGers,
After following the issues people have been experiencing with WestNet.
I have been in touch with WestNet Management and informed them of the
problems we have with them.
Hi WAMUGers,
WestNet Management got back to me yesterday with the results of their
Investigation into the issues we were concerned about.
I've itemized their answers to my questions for your information:
1. Near 100 percent cpu activity when viewing this page on a 1.8GHz G5
iMac.
WestNet Answer:
From Management:
It seems there is a flash-Mac issue. The size of our Flash banners
really are extremely small, but for some reason it appears that some
Macs don’t like Flash at all. As customers are demanding more active
content these days, and Flash is a core method of delivering active
content in extremely small packages, I don’t think we could contemplate
removing Flash from our site. I will keep an eye on this though, and if
there’s any way around the issue, we’ll investigate it. For now, all I
can suggest is switching off Flash, or not using that page. There are
changes on their way in the next few weeks, but they will still include
Flash, so I don’t anticipate that the changes will improve the
situation
I have heard that flash movies can perform badly on macs though I was
not aware of any of ours doing so. Like she says "Flash player 7 for
Mac OS X is still very processor intensive" this is a known issue
between mac and macromedia so there may not be anything we can do about
it.
From their Web Team:
"Too much flash" I don't think we use much flash at all and we are
always very careful ensuring our flash movies are quick to download and
quite often they are smaller then creating a similar banner as
an animated gif. Flash has been given a bad wrap, people see it and
assume it takes a long time to load where (when used properly) this is
not the case at all..
2.Unable to use WestNet's backup service if you have a Mac.
WestNet Answer:
The Express Backup issue is out of our hands. It was not developed by
Westnet, and the company that developed it, chose not to write a Mac
interface. So we are stranded until we move to a completely new
product.
3. Your Member photo site is basically inaccessible in Safari and even
in Firefox it isn't much chop.
WestNet Answer:
We are aware that myFoto does not work properly on a mac, but we are
assured version 2 will rectify this... although this will probably not
occur for quite a long time.
I asked for their permission to post their findings on our Mailing List
and they readily agreed.
and I quote :
"Yep, that’s fine Ronni. If there’s any constructive feedback from the
list, let me know. I’m sure we’ll get more Mac educated suggestions
from this list."
So, I guess we didn't get exactly the answers we wanted, but ....
WestNet did listen to our concerns, investigated them, and did get
back to us with their findings.
Cheers,
Ronni
When Microsoft asks you, "Where do you want to go today?" Tell them,
"Apple!"
