Coming soon... Bookster Rooms

We have developed interfaces to our booking platform that are suitable for B&Bs, Hostels and small Hotels.

It will be called "Bookster Rooms".

Bookster Rooms will include:

• many of the features of Bookster Self Catering;
• set up rates for multiple rooms;
• booking screens that allow the selection of multiple rooms;
• extras that apply to all or only one room type;

Launch of Apartments Glasgow

Rental Reserve have launched their Apartments Glasgow self catering website, utilising the Tribalogic Property Agent Website in formidable combination with Bookster Self Catering.

Why faster response times matter

We are constantly looking at ways of improving the performance of our platform allowing it to respond more quickly to users - whether it is writing faster database queries or introducing various server side caching layers.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is a fantastic usability newsletter and as he points out speed does matter.

Responsiveness matters for 2 reasons:

• Human limitations, especially in the areas of memory and attention (as further discussed in our seminar on The Human Mind and Usability). We simply don't perform as well if we have to wait and suffer the inevitable decay of information stored in short-term memory.
• Human aspirations. We like to feel in control of our destiny rather than subjugated to a computer's whims. Also, when companies make us wait instead of providing responsive service, they seem either arrogant or incompetent.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

Flexible listings

The Tribalogic Property Agent Website includes our powerful and flexible directory.

A good example of how this has been put to full use can be seen in the way that Rental Reserve have chosen to layout listings on their city breaks apartment websites.

See them in action on www.letinedinburgh.co.uk.

Or, list your property on Rental Reserve.

New feature: image cropping

Directory entry image cropping - no more squashed images!

As part of the v2.79 update to the platform, we have met a long standing desire of our users and added the ability to crop images uploaded for the directory.

Uploading an image for an entry is now a two stage process.

1. Upload
2. Crop

This produces images of the perfect aspect ratio for the directory and eliminates distortion.

An iPhone friendlier console

Improving the experience of our console on the small screen

We have made some small changes to the console to make it easier to view on the Apple iPhone.

While you our clients are out and about, it is now possible to keep an eye on bookings.

Speeding our websites up for Google

With the news that Google now take into account page speed in their ranking of web sites, we are trying to speed up our sites as much as possible.

For example, where possible we are:

• turning on compression for serving text files;
• minifying our CSS/JavaScript/HTML;
• using deferred loading techniques in our JavaScript.

We are getting pretty good results and our sites are really starting to fly (see letinedinburgh.co.uk or visitmidlothian.org.uk).

We are using Google's own Page Speed Firefox/Firebug tool as a guide to our progress, increasing one of our sites we looked at from 58/100 to 83/100 of their scale.

Best of all, because all of our sites are served from our platform, most of the benefits are passed on to all of our clients.

Software Update (v2.77)

Console: recently visited drop down

We have added a great new drop down menu that expands on the recently visited tabs to give console users access to the previous fifteen items they visited.

The recently visited tabs have been a huge hit with our users and will be right there waiting for you the next time you log in, making it much easier to return to the tasks you were doing during your last session.

Software Update (v2.76)

Highlights

Console: Advanced Filtering

When searching in "My Entries" and "My Bookings" Bookster Self Catering and Bookster ShowTime users can now filter their results in a more refined manner using the advanced filters.

Console: Groups

Those with access, can now:

• assign entries to groups
• update existing group details

Console: Add Entry Improvements

We have introduced a Syndicate setting that allows the syndicate manager to specify which Syndicates appear in the add booking form.

Console: Assume user identity

If you have the highest level of access in the console, you can now view exactly what any given user can view. We will be rolling this out to Directory Managers in due course.

Tribalogic and Haymarket continue to build on a successful relationship

Tribalogic are delighted to announce the continued arrangement helping Haymarket develop and grow Caravan Sitefinder, an online booking presence and related camping and caravanning websites.