In today’s terms, viewdata will look old fashioned and primitive. \u00a0Many people will immediately associate it with teletext, which, while not an incorrect assumption,\u00a0downplays the possibilities somewhat.<\/p>\n
Teletext is a broadcast medium, especially suited to transmitting a relatively small set of fixed pages, usually of news and information, whereas viewdata can be much more comprehensive and\u00a0far more interactive. \u00a0Originally starting with the same aims: to offer information on demand, it quickly became apparent that simply because it is a computer in direct communication with it’s users, it would be quite possible to react to what those users want.<\/p>\n
In the early days of Prestel, interaction was limited to “response frames” – a means where the IP (information provider) could present a page\u00a0that the user could enter details into pre-prepared fields, which would then be “sent” to the IP (actually, stored until the IP went looking for them!) \u00a0These were intended to be used for enquiry or order forms,\u00a0and were often featured in videos promoting the services, booking theatre tickets or ordering cases of wine. \u00a0I wonder whom the GPO thought their target audience was…<\/p>\n
This was quickly developed into an electronic mail service (called, simply, “Mailbox”) whereby users could send messages to anybody, be that an IP or another user.<\/p>\n
Some enterprising publishers automated the processing of their\u00a0messages, publishing them back online so any user of the service could see them, and react in turn! \u00a0Thus was born the chatline. \u00a0In many ways similar to bulletin boards, and today’s Internet forums, there were specialist and general examples, moderated and unmoderated, free to use or pay-to-post, and all combinations thereof.<\/p>\n
By utilising direct links, galled Gateways, from the Prestel network to their own systems, bigger businesses could offer even\u00a0more interaction. \u00a0Once you had your own\u00a0computer directly communicating with your end-user, it could tailor the responses to their actions, generating information and pages on-the-fly and providing up to date information, personalised data, or pretty much anything you wanted. \u00a0And you were not limited by how many pages you were renting from the GPO.<\/p>\n
The travel industry embraced this rather thoroughly, with a myriad of services allowing travel agents access to instant availability and booking services, both directly and through Prestel or other third party networks. \u00a0The Bank of Scotland launched their “Home and Office Banking” (HOBS) through Prestel. \u00a0The Midland Bank had it’s own service users could dial directly. \u00a0Littlewoods and Kays offered online catalogue shopping. British Rail linked their own private system through a Prestel gateway to allow the public access to timetables and other information. The possibilities were endless.<\/p>\n
Anything you can think of doing on a computer, you could do through viewdata. \u00a0The only limitation was the display format. \u00a0If you do it on “the internet” today, you could probably do it though viewdata 30 years ago!<\/p>\n
Here we will try to cover in detail a few of the\u00a0facilities people found most useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In today’s terms, viewdata will look old fashioned and primitive. \u00a0Many people will immediately associate it with teletext, which, while not an incorrect assumption,\u00a0downplays the possibilities somewhat. Teletext is a broadcast medium, especially suited to transmitting a relatively small set Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345,"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.viewdata.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}