This site contains Vacation itineraries. Each vacation has a name, and takes place over a range of dates. Each belongs to a registered user of On Vacation!

To view a vacation you must be logged in as a guest of the vacation’s owner. You do not need a password to log in as a guest, but you may need to know the User ID of the owner.

If you wish to see a list of all public vacations, click on the About button. At the bottom of the About page, you will see an alphabetical list of all public vacations on this site. Clicking on a link will automatically log you on as a guest of the vacation owner and present you with a monthly calendar showing the vacation dates.

Once you are logged on, a list of public vacations belonging to the user you are logged onto is presented in the login/logout panel on the right or left side of the window.

When you click on a vacation title several related commands will appear at the bottom of the login/logout penel.

• Calendar lets you view the monthly calendar, showing the current vacation.
• Summary/Comments lets you see the dates of the vacation and general comments about it.
• Itinerary lets you see a complete, printable, itinerary of the whole vacation.

Each vacation date on the calendar shows the destination city where the vacationer is staying for the night and a Tool Tip with details. Clicking on a city will present a page showing the travel details of that vacation date. This includes the accommodation for the evening, travel mode, notes by the user, and comments by vacation viewers. Any viewer may add comments. To add a comment, click on the Add a Comment button and fill in the form that pops up.

If a vacation spans more than one month, arrows (“<<” and “>>”) on the same line as the calandar subtitle will allow you to navigate to earlier and later months in the vacation.

Anyone may add a comment to any page that has an Add a Comment or Add a Suggestion button. These are individual vacation itinerary pages, the vacation Summary/Comments page, the Suggestions page and the Help page.

• Navigate to the page you’d like to add a comment to. Click on the Add a Comment or Add a Suggestion button. A popup window will open with a form for adding a comment. (You must not have a Popup Blocker set for this site.)
• Fill in you name and E-mail address. Check Private if you do not wish your address published.
• Type in your comment. You may use certain html tags in your comment. Click on the icon to see what you can use.
• Review your comment by clicking on the Preview button. When you are satisfied with your comment, click on the Save button.
• Click on the Cancel button to close the form without saving the comment.

Note: The owner of the vacation may edit or delete your comment. The On Vacation! webmaster may edit or delete any offensive comments.

Itineraries look quite stunning when printed.

To view a complete printable itinerary, first click on a vacation, then click on the Itinerary command. Use the browser’s Print menu command to print the page. When the page prints, only the heading and the itinerary itself will be printed. After printing, use your browser’s back button, or click on an item in the Login/Logout panel to continue navigating the site.

To create your own vacation itineraries, you will need your own User ID. Click on the Logout button, then click on the I’m New! button. Fill in the form:

• The User ID must be only letters and numbers and is what you type into the login panel to identify your ID. Case is ignored.
• First Name, M.I., Last Name, and suffix (Jr., III, etc.) is your name and is how your ID is shown in messages.
• Your password is required for you to login as a regular user. You need this to create and edit vacations, your user characteristics, and user comments. Remember your User ID and pasword.
• Your E-Mail address is optional but may be required if you forget your User ID or Password. It is also attached to any comments you make while logged in.
• The skin selects how On Vacation! pages are presented while someone is logged into your ID. Standard uses a white or lightly colored background. Black Watch uses a black and dark grey background. Black Watch also moves the login/logout panel from the left to the right.

When you click Save you will be registered and automatically logged into you new User ID.

Now that you are logged in, you should see your name on the top of the login/logout panel. If any errors occur while you are making changes, they will also appear at the top of the panel. In the middle of the panel are things that you can do, and at the bottom, will be a list of all the vacations that you have created, latest departure date first, once you have defined at least one vacation.

Click on the My Vacation Planner tab in the login/logout panel. A New button will be all that is visible in that panel. Click on it to start a new vacation itinerary. Fill the form and click Save.

• The Title identifies the vacation on links and on the calendars. Your vacation must have a title.
• The Start Date is the starting date of your vacation in mm/dd/yy format. It is the day you depart on your vacation.
• The End Date is the ending date of your vacation in mm/dd/yy format. It is the day you return from your vacation. A vacation may be from a one day to a multi-year trip in length, but the ending date must be greater than or equal to the starting date.
• There are two Guest Privileges. Checking Private means that only you can see this vacation and add comments to it. Checking Default means that this is the default vacation that displays after you login or visiter logs in on as a guest. Only one vacation at a time will be the default. Any user can add comments to a public vacation. Only you, if you do a regular login, may edit the vacation, its itinerary or any comments made about the vacation.

After you click Save, you will be returned to the My Vacation Planner panel. From the panel:

• Clicking on the red title of a vacation will bring you to the vacation summary page. There, click on Edit the Vacation button to edit the Vacation Title and Dates. Click on the Itinerary button to see a printable itinerary. Click on Vacation List to return to the vacation planner.
• Clicking on the little On Vacation! icon will show the Calendar panel with the first (or only) month that your vacation occurs in.

At the top of the Calendar, a subtitle will be the name of your vacation. This is a link to a vacation summary page where you or any other user may add comments about your vacation as a whole. You may also re-edit your vacation dates and title from here.

In the Calendar itself, there will be dashes on dates when your vacation is occuring. These are links to itinerary information and comments about the days of your vacation.

Click on a dash to see the information about that date. You will not expect to see any information about this date as none has been provided yet. If you now click on Edit, you will be presented with a form for providing information about this date.

• City is the final destination city of that date—where you plan to spend the night. It will also be the title of this date in the Calendar, after you save this form.
• Staying At will be your accommodation for that evening. Leave this on none for the day you are returning, or if this information is not yet available. Use the pulldown to select an existing accommodation/location, or click on the New button. A popup window will allow you record important information about the new accommodation; name, address, phone number, URL, notes, etc.
  To edit an existing accommodation, select it with the pulldown and click on Edit. When finished, you may reselect another accommodation and/or click on “Don’t Save” if you don't wish to use accommodation you just edited.
• Arriving via describes the transportation method for reaching your destination. Currently you may use up to 50 characters to describe methods, such as “AA Flight 91”, “train”, or “rental car”.
• Notes is a multi-line text field where you may enter public information such as intermediate stops, and other travel details—details you will make available to the public.
• Confidential are multi-line private notes that only you can see when you are logged on as a regular user. This the place to put travel voucher IDs or actual departure and arrival times.

After you click Save you will go back to the detail information panel for that date. Clicking on Back to the Calendar here will not save your changes!

From the detail information panel, you may use the forward and back buttons (“>>” and “<<”) to go to the next or previous date’s information panel. This lets you skip going through the Calendar to get to another day.

If you click on Back to the Calendar, you will go back the Calendar Panel. The date you justed worked on will be highlighted in red so you can easily spot it.

You do not have to fill in all itinerary information at once, but fill it in as you work out more details of your trip. Use On Vacation! to help you imagine your vacation, making it easier to plan out the details.

You can upload images and use them as backgrounds for vacation dates. Images can be .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, or .png files. On Vacation! does not scale images. You should make your image 100 pixels high by 100 to 150 pixels wide. Images that contrast well with blue and red text are the best.

To set a background image:

• You must be logged in as a regular user.
• Select a vacation calendar. Click on a vacation day to see the itinerary page for that day.
• Click on the Edit Button to edit the itinerary data for that day.
• The row, Background, will show the file selected as the backtround image. Click on the Select button to bring up the image maintenance popup form. (Like for editing comments, you must not must have a Popup Blocker set for this site.)
• The image selector form; shows a list of all the images you have uploaded to the site, lets you upload new images or delete existing images, lets you select, or deselect an image to be used as a background for the current date.
• To upload an image; Click on the Choose File (or Browse...) button. Use the file selector that pops up to pick a .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, or .png file to upload from your computer. Click Choose or Cancel.
• To delete an image in the list: Select the image to delete in the list. Click the Delete button. Confirm your action when asked. Deleting an image will immediately remove it from all dates that reference it.
• To select an image as a background: Select an image in the list. You will see it in the previewer space. Click the Select button. The popup will close and the image name will show on the background row of the date’s itinerary. Click the Save button to save your choice.
• To deselect the current background image: Click the Clear button. The popup will close and the current image name will be cleared from the background row of the date’s itinerary. Click the Save button to save your action.

Events are appointments or happenings that occur while you are on your vacation. An event has a starting and ending date and time. It may start and complete on a given day, span any time period, or just have a starting time. It may take place at a location selected from a location pulldown, and you may have notes about it.

Events are maintained separately from the vacations themselves, but are listed on the vacation days where they occur. They will be listed in the vacation itinerary.

• To create/edit events, use the My Event List button on the login/logout panel or select a day from a vacation calendar. From the event list, click on an event, or New. From a vacation day, click on an event occurring on the vacation day or Add an Event.
• You may enter the starting and ending dates in mm/dd/yyyy format, or use the Date Picker with the ... button. Times are in 24 hour—hh:mm:ss format. Make the starting and ending date and times match if you just want a single time for the event.
• Use the Location pulldown similarly to the Staying At pulldown for vacation days. Use the New and Edit buttons to create or modify locations. For convenience, both pulldowns present the same list of locations.
• The Description field lets you keep additional notes about the event.
• When finished, use Save, Don’t Save, or Delete. These will take you back to the display form of the event. From there, you may go back to the Event List, or the original vacation day you started from.

Note: When you view an individual event, you may copy its Permalink from the login/logout panel. See below.

Permalink is the term for a permanent link to a page on a journal website. A publishable page here will show the word “Permalink” next to “This vacation” on the login/loutout panel. For others to link to your vacation, you must not make it private.

The easiest way to make a link is:

• Make sure the vacation is not marked private.
• Navigate to the page you want to publish. If the word “Permalink” is not showing, the page in not publishable.
• Right click on the word “Permalink” and select “Copy Link” from the popup menu.
• Paste the link into an E-Mail message or a web page you are creating.