RaceFans site development

New F1 Fanatic Live for 2015

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  • #298068

    Normally when I make a significant change to an aspect of the site I like to let you all know about it in advance – unfortunately this wasn’t possible with the recent changes to F1 Fanatic Live which many of you discovered for the first time today.

    This came about for the simple reason that the old system F1 Fanatic Live was based on was being deprecated and is no longer available. It wasn’t without its shortcomings, not least the fact that it required people to log in using Facebook or Twitter, and this was among the problems we’ve tried to address with the new system.

    I also wanted to bring in some other ideas I’ve had for F1 Fanatic Live, particularly in terms of making more useful information and links immediately available regardless of what series people are following. The new pages have links to videos feeds for F1, IndyCar and more – many of them supplied by F1 Fanatic readers – live timing, and handy reference information on circuits and even some basic Spotters’ Guides.

    However the most important part is how your comments are handled. At present the system differs in some key ways from what went before and we plan to change that. In particular the pagination of the comments is causing some confusion. This is definitely something I want to address for a future weekend. In the meantime when you’re following along if you think you haven’t seen a new comment for a while it may be that you’re no longer on the newest page, in which case a quick refresh will make things clear.

    The new system does pull in new comments automatically without you having to refresh. At the moment we’re trying to find out how frequently this can be done without over-taxing the server, but there are improvements to be made here as well.

    Thanks to those of you who have supplied suggestions and feedback on how to improve it. I have already made a few tweaks which you will be able to see the tomorrow, specifically in terms of increasing the space available to add your comments, particularly on smaller screens.

    Please do supply any further feedback on the changes to F1 Fanatic Live below: what you like, what you don’t like, what new stuff you’d like to see in future. Thanks everyone!

    #298071

    An edit button would be nice :)

    #298073
    dragoll
    Participant

    Hi Keith, I like the new bars/links and the fact that I can use my F1F login, thats really cool.

    Just a couple of requests:

    * Currently when you enter in a comment, it default reloads the page and goes to the comment you just wrote, ideally I’d like the screen to sit at the top, so I can enter in another comment quickly/see other peoples comments after I wrote mine.

    * Given the above request, I would like to be taken to my comment in the situation where I’m replying to someone elses comment, as I want to see if there is a reply to my comment. However, if its a case of one or the other, then I’d prefer the 1st request I made

    * Currently when you type over 1 line and submit the comment, the Reply and Report User buttons do not line up correctly, the Reply button is normal but the Report User button moves a line down and indents slightly.

    * And the other one that you’re already aware of is a mechanism for the pagination to auto turn the page, or ideally not have any pagination at all and have all comments in 1 long stream.

    Keep up the good work, love your efforts.

    #298078
    falken
    Participant

    Auto-scrolling when I post is a pain. I’ve got the page just how I like it (header off the top, comment box at the top) so I can post and also so a chunk of the conversation. Please stop moving things around without asking when I press ‘post’ :-)

    Also, for the first few posts, ‘report’ is under ‘reply’ not along side, but this seems to have gone away.

    I’d also like a wider layout, rather than empty side bars, but that’s more of a pet bug bear about many a ‘modern’ web site.

    #298079
    falken
    Participant

    Oh, and the top header size could be reduced, but that might be an issue because it’s the same site-wide.

    #298080
    mickey18
    Participant

    Also hate to say it Keith, but it isn’t working on my phone (iPhone 5s), I can see the tweets, that’s it. It won’t let me scroll sideways to view the forum.

    I also wonder if, when you first launch the page, it could automatically come up with the most recent comments. At the moment it directs you to page 1 which is full of stuff from a few days ago.

    #298085
    falken
    Participant

    And another thing caused by paginated rather infinite scroll – sometimes when you post it reloads to a new page and the only comment you can see is yours.

    Just install Discourse and be done with it :-)

    #298128

    @falken Discourse…looks interesting. It’s a bit curious that the licence is GPL 2 rather than GPL>=2, but why should I care too much about that part?

    #298903

    @dragoll @davidnotcoulthard @falken @mickey18 Thanks for the feedback and suggestions so far. I’ve implemented a few changes for tomorrow to address some of your concerns – these are fairly cosmetic alterations, however. Deeper changes are required to get the whole thing working as we wanted it, and they need a bit more work first.

    However on narrower screen widths the Twitter columns will now vanish and the comment area will take up the space, allowing you to follow the conversation on devices with small screens. And the ‘Report user’ function has been taken out to tidy that up.

    This is just a small step for now, there is more to come in future.

    If the page seems no different to you, refresh the page to make sure you’re seeing the latest version.

    #298912
    falken
    Participant

    Yup, it’s certainly better.

    #300001
    matt90
    Participant

    On Chrome I can’t see any comments or write my own. The tweets are to the side, the 2 special toolbars are at the top, the rest is completely blank (all the other standard site menus, sidebar etc. are still present).

    #300002
    Bradley Downton
    Participant

    @matt90 – Yeah I have the same, I think there’s currently an issue.

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