Steps to Computer Upgrades
#16
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: OH & NV
Programs: AA Lifetime Plat, WN CP, Latin Pass Bonus
Posts: 3,707
#17
Moderator, Southwest Airlines and Choice Privileges
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Central Texas
Posts: 3,039
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Appletom! WN certainly wouldn't want me for my ability to slowly (but doggedly) write ugly computer code. I get the feeling, however, that I could teach them something about software. And we'd be a good fit; I'm an LCC also! (LCC= "Low Cost Consultant!") Even better, I'm also an LFC! (Low Fare Car..., oops, I meant Low Fee Consultant).
All kidding aside, I'll have more to discuss about this topic, but it will take days (at least) for me to get to all of it.
The misspelling of visibility was caught by the Firefox error console, so it makes no sense for that to have gotten past the internal Quality Assurance folks.
All kidding aside, I'll have more to discuss about this topic, but it will take days (at least) for me to get to all of it.
The misspelling of visibility was caught by the Firefox error console, so it makes no sense for that to have gotten past the internal Quality Assurance folks.
#18
Moderator, Southwest Airlines and Choice Privileges
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Central Texas
Posts: 3,039
Steve M, there is a thread titled "How to quickly check fare after searching for award seats" that explains a fairly simple workaround for this problem. As stated in the first post, it is quite an annoyance that they make us "Start Over" and enter all the search parameters again. Here is what it would take to include a link on the "Select Flight" page that shows award availability:
(That example paragrah is a fake link; the JavaScript code above would create a real link.)
The above would only work in browsers with JavaScript enabled and code would have to be added to the "Select Flight" cgi routine to cause the displayed page to have these changes. So the right way to do it would be to just have the cgi routine insert the actual HTML into the page, rather than do it via JavaScript. I don't have access to the cgi so I posted the JavaScript version above to demonstrate that "it ain't rocket (aviation?) science," and it certainly doesn't require modification of the systems used at the airline ticket counters.
Victor, in appreciation for your contributions to this forum and your assistance on my other problem, the online team has my blessing to freely utilize or adapt the above to make this improvement to the southwest.com customer experience.
Edit: I realize you might not want to make this change to the regular live pages of southwest.com without a lot of testing across different platforms. An alternative would be to utilize readers of this forum as your testers. The site already has buildItinerary and buildItinerary2 (maybe the same page); you could copy one of those to buildItineraryFT and copy showItinerary to showItineraryFT. Then make the small modification discussed above to showItineraryFT, and change the form action in buildItineraryFT to post to showItineraryFT. Even if these cgi routines are compiled C programs, it almost surely would take less than one hour of labor to make the change as described here.
- Include a function something like this in the JavaScript on that page:function fnWritePricingLink()
{
document.write ("<p class=\"pricingLink\">View <a href=\"" + document.location + "&type=" + "\">prices</a> for these flights!")
} - Add "fnWritePricingLink() ;" to call the function at the appropriate place in the page;
- Decide what the "pricingLink" paragraph should look like (text size, color, alignment, etc.) and add its definition (a few very short lines of text) to the style sheet.
View prices for these flights!
(That example paragrah is a fake link; the JavaScript code above would create a real link.)
The above would only work in browsers with JavaScript enabled and code would have to be added to the "Select Flight" cgi routine to cause the displayed page to have these changes. So the right way to do it would be to just have the cgi routine insert the actual HTML into the page, rather than do it via JavaScript. I don't have access to the cgi so I posted the JavaScript version above to demonstrate that "it ain't rocket (aviation?) science," and it certainly doesn't require modification of the systems used at the airline ticket counters.
Victor, in appreciation for your contributions to this forum and your assistance on my other problem, the online team has my blessing to freely utilize or adapt the above to make this improvement to the southwest.com customer experience.
Edit: I realize you might not want to make this change to the regular live pages of southwest.com without a lot of testing across different platforms. An alternative would be to utilize readers of this forum as your testers. The site already has buildItinerary and buildItinerary2 (maybe the same page); you could copy one of those to buildItineraryFT and copy showItinerary to showItineraryFT. Then make the small modification discussed above to showItineraryFT, and change the form action in buildItineraryFT to post to showItineraryFT. Even if these cgi routines are compiled C programs, it almost surely would take less than one hour of labor to make the change as described here.
Last edited by ftnoob; Jul 28, 2008 at 12:01 pm Reason: Add note about using FT readers for testing
#19
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Department of Homeland Sincerity
Programs: WN Platinum
Posts: 12,085
While in general I love the SWA website, I do have a suggestion as well as an observation of a minor issue.
Suggestion: make flight status check an option on mobile.southwest.com
Minor issue: Occasionally when I'm booking new flights, I'll get an error page "your session has timed out, please start over". This is even when I have just clicked on "book trip" and started the purchase process. It happens often enough on multiple PCs that I don't think it's a cookie or local issue, but a web server issue. Would be nice if this happened much less often or not at all.
Suggestion: make flight status check an option on mobile.southwest.com
Minor issue: Occasionally when I'm booking new flights, I'll get an error page "your session has timed out, please start over". This is even when I have just clicked on "book trip" and started the purchase process. It happens often enough on multiple PCs that I don't think it's a cookie or local issue, but a web server issue. Would be nice if this happened much less often or not at all.
#20
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: ORD, MDW or MKE
Programs: American and Southwest. Hilton and Marriott hotels primarily.
Posts: 6,465
Minor issue: Occasionally when I'm booking new flights, I'll get an error page "your session has timed out, please start over". This is even when I have just clicked on "book trip" and started the purchase process. It happens often enough on multiple PCs that I don't think it's a cookie or local issue, but a web server issue. Would be nice if this happened much less often or not at all.
#21
Original Member and FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Kansas City, MO, USA
Programs: DL PM/MM, AA ExPlat, Hyatt Glob, HH Dia, National ECE, Hertz PC
Posts: 16,579
Minor issue: Occasionally when I'm booking new flights, I'll get an error page "your session has timed out, please start over". This is even when I have just clicked on "book trip" and started the purchase process. It happens often enough on multiple PCs that I don't think it's a cookie or local issue, but a web server issue. Would be nice if this happened much less often or not at all.
I would think what would be a better solution is on the warning screen to give the user two options, 1) Continue without logging in; or 2) Login on that screen and continue with what you were already doing. Having to hit back, then login, then start over is not a good option.
#22
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: PEK
Programs: A3*G, UA Gold EY Silver
Posts: 8,972
A lot of you know that I have mentioned some computer upgrades that are coming, and that the timing of these are dependent upon other upgrades. In turn, I know some of you are impatient with this pace. This article from the Dallas Morning News yesterday will give you an idea of the complexity of the issue. CS2 is obviously the core and it has to be in place and working before all of the other good stuff can come along. So, we are making progress, and this is one of the big hurdles we are about to have jumped.
Brian
Brian
#23
In Memoriam - Company Representative - Southwest Airlines
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Dallas, TX
Programs: Southwest spokesperson
Posts: 1,201