Introduction
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Where do you want to go on your bicycle? And what can you expect there? Travel to the Horizon helps you to find the answer to these questions. Not by providing the information itself, but by supplying you a link to the 'hidden treasures': useful resources on bicycle travel, out there somewhere on the internet.
The aim of Travel to the Horizon is to be the most efficient, complete and up to date starting point for resources on bicycle travel on the web. If you have useful information on this subject on your own website, you can add a link to Travel to the Horizon yourself.
Discussion
For discussion on the subject of bicycle traveling, you can visit the newsgroup rec.bicycles.rides. If you don't have a news reader program, this newsgroup is also available through Google Groups.
About this website
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The Travel to the Horizon website is a comprehensive, well structured database containing links to bicycle travel related information. It is a 100% non-commercial initiative that started in December 1995 as 'Travel-by-cycle'.
The site is created and maintained by Raph de Rooij, Pijnacker, The Netherlands.
Navigation
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Information is geographically grouped. By selecting a country, information can easily be found. In the USA and Canada it is possible to select a state or province/territory.
There a several ways to access the information: you can use the drop-down menu at the top of the browser screen, select a country from a list or use a clickable world map.
It is also possible to find information through the search page.
A maximum of ten items is showed at a time. If more than ten items are found, the other results can be accessed through the links that appear in the right upper corner and the right bottom corner of the page.
Filtering of results
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Travel to the Horizon offers several tools to find your way in the hundreds of links that are available in de database. First of all, you can select a region or a country. Another possibility is to select the kind of information you are looking for by using the category filter. And if you are only interested in information in one particular language, you can apply the language filter.
If you use two or three filters at the same time, it is possible that no 'hits' are found. When this happens, you are advised to switch off one of the filters.
Category filter
A selection can be refined by using the category filter. You can select one of the following categories:
The selection will remain active during the user session, but can be switched off by selecting the button  , with the title 'Switch category filter off'.
Language filter
On a results page, it is possible to switch on a language filter. From that moment, only records in the selected laguage are shown. The filter can be switched off by selecting the button , with the title 'Switch language filter off'.
Please note that at present there is only a limited number of records available in other languages than English. The interface language will remain English, no matter what language is chosen.
If the selection and filtering option did not produce the desired results, you are advised to switch off one of the filters or both filters.
Graphics
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- Some of the graphics on these pages contain links:
- The small Travel to the Horizon logo on all pages will bring you back to the home page.
- The world map gives direct access to country information.
- A green coloured country means that information about traveling by bicycle is available.
- A click on other countries will produce a link to the website of Lonely Planet.
Other graphics are used to visualise the features of a record:
 | Recommended link: good or unique content |
 | Photography with descriptive captions |
 | Route maps |
 | Links to relevant resources |
Compatibility
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This site is tested for accessibility and functionality with ANY screen resolution and ANY browser, including non-graphical browsers such as Lynx. However, some of the features used - frames, tables, clickable maps, DHTML, cascading style sheets and JavaScript - are used as supporting technology and are only available with browsers that support these features, such as (in alphabetical order) Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape Navigator or Opera.
Accessibility
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A number of links can be accessed directly by the keyboard, provided that the ACCESSKEY attribute is supported by the browser. In a mainstream browser such as Internet Explorer, this can be done by ALT+<Key>, Enter.
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| 0 | To the Homepage |
| 1 | Travel stories |
| 2 | Bicycle travel info |
| 3 | General travel info |
| 4 | Organised tours |
| 5 | Literature and maps |
| 6 | Touring equipment |
| S | Search |
| N | Add your site / Add a record |
| L | Log on / Log off |
| A | About this site |
| T | Go to the top of the page |
| C | Go to the content on the page |
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Besides being a starting point on the web for bicycle travel related information, Travel to the Horizon serves as a testbed for accessibility. The website is designed to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, priority 3, in combination with the use of frames, forms, scripting, CSS, Dynamic HTML, image maps, a database, multilingual content etc.
The entire site is designed to qualify for Bobby Triple-A approval. One exception is the clickable world map, which for practical reasons (i.e. the size of the HTML document) 'only' qualifies for Bobby Double-A approval. For more information, see the Priority 3 accessibility error 'Client-side image map contains a link not presented elsewhere on the page'. The other two clickable maps (Canada and the USA) that are used on this site are in conformance with this low priority checkpoint.
Qualifying for Triple-A approval doesn't necessarily mean that all types of impairment are evenly served. There are four main categories of disabilities that can affect a person's use of the Internet. It is the opinion of the author (based on 'feeling' rather than facts) that the level of accessibility for each category should read:
- Visual impairments: Triple-A
- Hearing impairments: Triple-A
- Motor impairments: Double-A
- Cognitive/neurological impairments: Single-A
Suggestions that lead to further improvement of the accessibility of this website are highly appreciated.
For more information on accessibility, see www.w3.org/WAI, www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20 or bobby.watchfire.com.
Standards compliance
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The aim of Travel to the Horizon is to comply with web standards such as (X)HTML, CSS, ECMA-script. However, not all attributes that are used are allowed by the XHTML 1.0 Frameset or Transitional specification. An example is the use of framespacing, border and frameborder attributes in <frameset> and <frame> tags. Officially, use of these attributes is not permitted, but no circumstances are known where they cause problems.
Another example is the use of onfocus and onblur attributes in <tr> tags. These attributes are used in order to qualify for Bobby Triple-A approval, but they are (for obvious reasons) not allowed in the <tr> tag. Again, no circumstances are known where the use of these attributes cause problems. The consequence is that the pages are not valid XHTML 1.0 Frameset or Transitional in the W3C MarkUp Validation Service.
If you feel that the assumptions mentioned here are incorrect, please let me know and send me an E-mail.
Bookmark
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The easiest to remember and (in time) most reliable WWW-address to Travel to the Horizon:
http://www.raph.nl.
If you want to bookmark Travel to the Horizon, place you mouse over the above link, click on the right mouse button (for Windows users; this might also work on other platforms) and choose 'Add Bookmark' or 'Add to favorites'.
Direct links to information on the site
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If you own a website containing information about bicycle travel in a country or region, you may want to add a 'deeplink' to the country page on Travel to the Horizon. An example of a deeplink (to the Netherlands) is http://www.raph.nl/bicycle/travel/europe/netherlands/.
Take a look at the sitemap for a complete listing of countries and URLs.
Credits
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First of all, many thanks to the people that have added a link to the Travel to the Horizon website. Below is an overview of the resources and software that are used for creating this website.
- Country information, facts and figures: Lonely Planet
- Windows 95/98 free software and free services that are used for this site:
Feedback
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Let me know what you think of Travel to the Horizon:
send me an E-mail. Especially suggestions that lead to improvement of this site are very welcome!
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