MY AUTOSPORT.COM - questions, feedback & errors

Bira, any chance that you can add the ability to create folders within the "Edit all your links at once" section?

Originally posted by Joel


Bira,

Many thanks for your research and suggestions, I'll give it a try and report the issue with Omni, they have been very responsive to problems reported to them in the past.

Regards,

Joel.

In that case, tell them that an AJAX Prototype Ajax.Request() is not working on 5.5 beta - I think they already know there are issues with it

Originally posted by JForce
Bira, any chance that you can add the ability to create folders within the "Edit all your links at once" section?

makes sense, yeah

Originally posted by Rich


Not a complaint as such, but it's weird. I opened a new PC thread that I hadn't opened before, and it dropped me in half-way down the first page.

Yeah, I have to admit, it annoys me too

I reverted it to the way it was before.

Back to square 1

Originally posted by bira


Yeah, I have to admit, it annoys me too

I reverted it to the way it was before.

Yes, it was unusual. But it took me a couple of clicks to get used to it and enjoy
How often do you open new thread? Max - once per thread. And how often do you open threads to read unread messages?

Another question - what is the point in opening thread at last post? I understand - it is logical to have a link to the last post under the name of last poster, but anyway...

The real solution is to make it customizable of course, but I do not know how much efforts does it take to add customizable parameter to a box in your code. So I even do not ask you to do it. Just thoughts

Originally posted by bira


Yeah, I have to admit, it annoys me too

I reverted it to the way it was before.

Back to square 1

I really thought it was working well.

Another suggestion, then: you could add the '&goto=newpost' link to the small arrow in front of the headers; it could take some effort to manage (and get used) to click on it, but it will satisfy both uses.

Anyway, the more I use the my.autosport, the better it gets; it is my homepage, once more. Great work, thanks a lot!

Costas

Originally posted by Beef Eater
Another question - what is the point in opening thread at last post? I understand - it is logical to have a link to the last post under the name of last poster, but anyway...

Then you'll be surprised to find out that the majority of the clicks into a thread from My Atlas were
through the goto=lastpost

Originally posted by bira


In that case, tell them that an AJAX Prototype Ajax.Request() is not working on 5.5 beta - I think they already know there are issues with it

Bira,

Thanks for that, I'll pass it on. More requests they get, the more likely it is to be resolved.

Laying out the tabs with Safari 2.x and saving them there as per your suggestion worked nicely and OmniWeb then displayed the saved pages correctly.

It really is both useful and fun to be able to configure a page like this and for special interests such F1, where information is everything, it's a valuable resource. Thanks to you and your team for a great update to the My Atlas concept.

Joel.

Thanks

Originally posted by bira


Then you'll be surprised to find out that the majority of the clicks into a thread from My Atlas were
through the goto=lastpost

No, I am not. I used it too.

Just because there was no link to newpost.
Sometimes, after long timeout in reading forum I had to go to the forums page to use those links, because newposts were not at last page in this case.

well hopefully the change I did now works

Originally posted by bira
well hopefully the change I did now works

Many thanks!
I am happy now

Is it easy to add an option to disable the 10 minute auto-refresh on the new my autosport page?

Originally posted by snark
Is it easy to add an option to disable the 10 minute auto-refresh on the new my autosport page?

why would you want to disable it?

Originally posted by bira


why would you want to disable it?

If I don't check for a few days and there's been a lot of new stories, I usually click on the top story and then navigate through the stories using the "Next story" links before refreshing the current my-atlas page. If it auto-refreshes, then I just see the last 10 or 15 or whatever most recent headlines and there's no easy way to start at the oldest unread new story.

Another reason (although clutching at straws!) is that here in Australia most ISP accounts have download limits, and then either severely restrict your download speed or charge for extra usage. I'd guess though that the amount of traffic generated by the 10 minute refreshes is quite small, but it could add up over a month (yes, I leave my browser open all the time).

Originally posted by snark


If I don't check for a few days and there's been a lot of new stories, I usually click on the top story and then navigate through the stories using the "Next story" links before refreshing the current my-atlas page. If it auto-refreshes, then I just see the last 10 or 15 or whatever most recent headlines and there's no easy way to start at the oldest unread new story.

Another reason (although clutching at straws!) is that here in Australia most ISP accounts have download limits, and then either severely restrict your download speed or charge for extra usage. I'd guess though that the amount of traffic generated by the 10 minute refreshes is quite small, but it could add up over a month (yes, I leave my browser open all the time).

Your two reasons negate each other. Either you are an infrequent user who therefore needs to look at a long list of stories or something; or you're a frequent user who wants to save bandwidth.

Either way, both reasons sound unreasonable to me (sorry) as far as altering the behaviour of the tool or making it a user option. It makes no sense at all.

I don't know how many news reports you got in a box. Normally people have 10, 15, even 20. You really think in 10 minutes we are going to add so much news that you'll completely lose track?

We're good, but we're not that good

Originally posted by bira


Your two reasons negate each other. Either you are an infrequent user who therefore needs to look at a long list of stories or something; or you're a frequent user who wants to save bandwidth.

Either way, both reasons sound unreasonable to me (sorry) as far as altering the behaviour of the tool or making it a user option. It makes no sense at all.

I don't know how many news reports you got in a box. Normally people have 10, 15, even 20. You really think in 10 minutes we are going to add so much news that you'll completely lose track?

We're good, but we're not that good

Fair 'nuf. I did say the second reason was clutching at straws, and that wasn't a concern for me anyway.

The first reason is how I do like to operate though, and is how the current my-atlas works. It's not a bunch of stories in 10 minutes that I was thinking of, but the situation where if I go away for a few days or a week and want to catch up on the news from where I last left it. I was happy with the old way, but I'm sure I'll survive...

Would a compromise be to add some sort of option to jump to the last read news story (or perhaps better - the next news story after the last read news story), sort of similar to the forum's "next unread" link?

Originally posted by snark
Would a compromise be to add some sort of option to jump to the last read news story (or perhaps better - the next news story after the last read news story), sort of similar to the forum's "next unread" link?

Nice feature idea. I'll think about implementing it

Looks good, but is very flaky for me. Dragging of boxes has huge lag to the mouse, and often won't release when I click; the arrangement I spent some time putting together at home doesn't work at the office, even though I have the same display.

The clue may be that I'm using Opera (v9 at home, v8.51 at work) and a large screen (1900x1200).

Originally posted by benrapp
Looks good, but is very flaky for me. Dragging of boxes has huge lag to the mouse, and often won't release when I click; the arrangement I spent some time putting together at home doesn't work at the office, even though I have the same display.

The clue may be that I'm using Opera (v9 at home, v8.51 at work) and a large screen (1900x1200).

I had the same problem with Opera myself (9.01, 1024x768), and the same happened when I was moving things around in a blog template the other day. So it is probably Opera's fault(?). Anyway, I just used firefox for half an hour to fix things, which worked very smoothly, and now back to opera it is.

C.

Originally posted by benrapp
Looks good, but is very flaky for me. Dragging of boxes has huge lag to the mouse, and often won't release when I click; the arrangement I spent some time putting together at home doesn't work at the office, even though I have the same display.

The clue may be that I'm using Opera (v9 at home, v8.51 at work) and a large screen (1900x1200).

That is Opera's fault, they have implementation issues with web 2.0 protocols. Anyway, I know that they are aware of it and working on it. It is slightly better in v9.

But, yes, Opera isn't the most web 2.0 friendly browser at the moment. They will catch up fast, though.

Oh, just realised another possible bug in the BB panels. I understand that the 'RC Bets & Games Forum' is a new feauture in the my.autosport and was part of the RC box in the my.atlas. However, threads from the 'RC Bets & Games Forum' still find their way into the RC box, and thus, there are duplicate thread titles in the page.

I hope I make sense.

PS. Many thanks for the arrow for 'first unread' thingy, it works perfect!

Oh, and another one:

When you go to the 'add content' page for my.autosport, the link from the top page banner still sends you to http://my.autosport.com/ instead of the http://www.autosport.com/my/

Originally posted by Costaz
Oh, and another one:

When you go to the 'add content' page for my.autosport, the link from the top page banner still sends you to http://my.autosport.com/ instead of the http://www.autosport.com/my/

Fixed (although on Sept 1, I will switch the URL to my.autosport.com permanently.)

So I finally got opporunity to switch to my.autosport.com and I have to say well done, really.

Really high quality service, I really appreciate it. Very nice and clever.

Each box should really have remembered last visit layout (e.g. link folders opened in my links or Schedule vs. Quotes for Grand Prix weekend schedule box).

Originally posted by Tomecek
Each box should really have remembered last visit layout (e.g. link folders opened in my links or Schedule vs. Quotes for Grand Prix weekend schedule box).

Why?

Folders are there for a reason. If you want the links visible at all time, don't put them in a folder. Instead, leave them in the main view and, if you like, add a group keyword to each of them.

For example, I have around 50 links, 10 of them in the main view, and the others in folders. Of the ten in main view, three are a "group", so I put a keyword in front of them (to ensure they are sorted consecutively).

So my favourites look like this:

Keyword: Link 1
Keyword: Link 2
Keyword: Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Link 6
etc...
Folder 1
Folder 2
Folder 3
etc...

As for the GP weekend box, I really don't feel like adding another parameter that is stored in the db, for something like that. Every time you switch between then, it has to update the db. I reckon that's quite a waste.

Originally posted by bira


Why?

Folders are there for a reason.

Yeah, you are right, that was not the greatest example.

Originally posted by bira
As for the GP weekend box, I really don't feel like adding another parameter that is stored in the db, for something like that. Every time you switch between then, it has to update the db. I reckon that's quite a waste.

You see this as a waste, I don't, but obviously you decide the way it will be. I don't know how difficult it would have been to implement 'remember' function, but you are right that usefulness of this feature is questionable in regard to effort - as is for many other features ;)

Hello,
A friend of mine who can’t access the internet at the moment(he just has email) has asked me to post his suggestions on how My Autosport can be improved and made more user friendly.


1. Suggestion: Have the YAHOO News, news ticker allow you to pick the categories of interest you want(i.e. you may not want any Entertainment Stories) and a direction arrow be placed at the end of the news ticker, so that you can bring back a headline that just scrolled by.

1. Rationale: This will mean that the News Ticker will have the same level of user friendliness that the current YAHOO News Ticker has in My Atlas.


2. Suggestion: The ability to chose from a wide variety of colours for each box. I would very much like the dark green colour that is the default used in My Atlas.

2. Rationale: I see in this thread you have stated that the washed out colours are part of the Autosport design philosophy of making the news stand out, but respectfully I find the washed out colours to be very offputting and I can’t see why you should be concerned with the colours that users want to employ on their own screens.


3. Suggestion: Allow for the Google Link options to be other than .com. It would be nice to have domestic versions like www.google.ru or www.google.com.tw

3. Rationale: Just be nice, but not a must have by any means, so if it is a lot of work, forget about it.


4. Suggestion: Make the 10 minutes REFRESH an option that can be turned on or off by the user.

4. Rationale: This functionality existed in MyAtlas, and when I left it on, I was frequently hitting the limits of my workplace’s download limits for individual employees. Once I turned the REFRESH off, I stopped receiving threatening emails from my IT Department saying they were going to be contacting my manager.

Thank you for such an impressive product.

Is it not possible to set-up any RSS source? Web based RSS application E.g. I am not such interested in Yahoo news but some local news... Would be awesome...

1. Suggestion: Have the YAHOO News, news ticker allow you to pick the categories of interest you want(i.e. you may not want any Entertainment Stories) and a direction arrow be placed at the end of the news ticker, so that you can bring back a headline that just scrolled by.

1. Rationale: This will mean that the News Ticker will have the same level of user friendliness that the current YAHOO News Ticker has in My Atlas.

Not going to happen, I'm afraid. I may add other boxes, but this box comes as-is. It's NOT the same as the ticker we used on My Atlas, which was a java applet and different to this one.

I may work on this ticker in the future, and I may add other tickers. But don't expect this to end up like the one in My Atlas.

If you are not interested in all topics, get the combo box - or get specific boxes per topic.

2. Suggestion: The ability to chose from a wide variety of colours for each box. I would very much like the dark green colour that is the default used in My Atlas.

2. Rationale: I see in this thread you have stated that the washed out colours are part of the Autosport design philosophy of making the news stand out, but respectfully I find the washed out colours to be very offputting and I can’t see why you should be concerned with the colours that users want to employ on their own screens.

The difference is, in My Atlas we used solid colours for the bars. So you chose any background colour you wanted, really. This is not the case in the new my autosport.com - and until I change altogether the design architecture of the page and boxes, you won't be able to choose solid colours.

3. Suggestion: Allow for the Google Link options to be other than .com. It would be nice to have domestic versions like www.google.ru or www.google.com.tw

3. Rationale: Just be nice, but not a must have by any means, so if it is a lot of work, forget about it.

That is in the works already.

4. Suggestion: Make the 10 minutes REFRESH an option that can be turned on or off by the user.

4. Rationale: This functionality existed in MyAtlas, and when I left it on, I was frequently hitting the limits of my workplace’s download limits for individual employees. Once I turned the REFRESH off, I stopped receiving threatening emails from my IT Department saying they were going to be contacting my manager.

The PAGE does not refresh automatically at all, but rather the boxes do. My recommendation: create multiple tabs. Place in one tab the content you want to have refreshing, and in another the content you don't want automatically refreshing.

However, in order to explain to you why I chose not to make this a selectable option, I need to explain to you how the download structure of the page works.

Let's say you got 20 boxes on a tab.

When you load the page the very first time, this is what you are downloading:

1) The page itself - 23.50 kb
2) The scripts and stylesheets - 144.75 kb
3) 20 box structures, each is 3.75kb - 75.00 kb
4) the content of 20 boxes, average each is 4.5kb - 90.00 kb

Now, the scripts in #2 are cachable, and the browser does not download them every time - only if they have changed on the server (which is rare), or after the cache on the browser has been emptied (which isn't often either).

So let's say this is the very first time you access the page, and you download everything, then you're downloading 333.25 kb before images.

However, we use compression, and zlib tends to compress text at a very high ratio. Testing a 300kb My autosport.com page yielded a download of 34kb - so nearly 90% saved.

So if we stick with the above example, you are downloading about 40kb first time.

Thereafter, every 10 to 15 minutes, the boxes refresh - but only the content (item #4 above) refreshes, so with compression, you are looking at average of 0.5 kb per box - or approximately 10kb in total.

Since some boxes refresh every 10 minutes and some every 15 - you are looking at, over one hour, a maximum of 40kb.

To give you an idea, that's the equivalent of looking at just a single BB thread every hour...

Originally posted by Tomecek
Is it not possible to set-up any RSS source? Web based RSS application E.g. I am not such interested in Yahoo news but some local news... Would be awesome...

What's stopping you from doing that?

Originally posted by bira


What's stopping you from doing that?

Ouch, I was looking for that option but didn't spot it I thought you have only selected RSS sources and was extra careful after your post. I have to express my respect to that service even more, really.

All the RSS feeds were added by users like yourself

But one issue I'd like to point out though, if I may: you have slight problems with encoding:



I cannot use my own language for bookmarks, etc...

Original MyAtlas was ok.

Originally posted by Tomecek
But one issue I'd like to point out though, if I may: you have slight problems with encoding:



I cannot use my own language for bookmarks, etc...

Original MyAtlas was ok.

The charset hasn't changed - it was iso-8859-1 in My Atlas, and it's iso-8859-1 in my autosport.com.

I am surprised you didn't have problems in My Atlas, but if you didn't, then you shouldn't in this version either.

Personally, I'd have thought it wouldn't work. I don't think it's possible to have different charsets on the same page.

Actually, come to think of it, a couple things have changed, that may affect this. I'll investigate a bit more

Might you add the RC Live forum to the 12 Atlas Bulletin Board options?

Grazie
Jp

Originally posted by jonpollak
Might you add the RC Live forum to the 12 Atlas Bulletin Board options?

Grazie
Jp

There is no point, actually. At any given time, RC Live will have a couple of threads active (and open) only. These threads, when they are active (e.g. during a GP weekend), are at the top of the total threads in the RC box anyway.

Yep you are right...it's in my favorites anyway.
Jp

I'll need to get used to this new thing. Here's my thoughts.

1. I'ld like a interface more like the old one: with a small left column and a wider right column. Though it may not be a possibility right now, you may want to hold this in your head for future development. Why? Well, A small reference section on the left and a bigger content part on the right (that I then read top to bottom).

2. A background color behind the boxes would add a lot of contrast to the whole page, and add in the readability and attractiveness. Make it configurable (like it was in the old system), and everyone will be a lot more happy. Default would be white of course.

3. I tried to organize the boxes in IE, but it failed to pick up the boxes. Live.com works. In FireFox I was able to set them correctly and save. So now in IE they are better. IE version= 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158.

Bira,
absolutly brilliant work....already my new homepage..

I'm sorry if this has already been asked.. I'm using Firefox and all links open in a new window?? can this be turned off??

Keep up the good work..

Regards

PaulSc

p.s anybody know of a good site with 'historic' race videos??

PaulSc,

You can have links opening in the same window by clicking on the small icon next to your tab name (eg DEFAULT TAB).

The weather widget is still showing the weather in Hungary. Would like to see Turkey at this point, just a few days away from the race.

No comments at this stage beyond "wow" and "how did it take me a week to find this?"

Will take some time to set everything up but it's already my new homepage!

Big big thank you to Bira and anyone else at autosport.com that has been involved in this - it's brilliant!

Loving the new My Autosport, it's awesome.

The only thing I miss is a quick way to get to championship standings for different series. It'd be great to have a championship standings combo box.

Originally posted by Mickey
PaulSc,

You can have links opening in the same window by clicking on the small icon next to your tab name (eg DEFAULT TAB).

Excellent Thank you.....

Originally posted by bira


Why?

Folders are there for a reason. If you want the links visible at all time, don't put them in a folder. Instead, leave them in the main view and, if you like, add a group keyword to each of them.

For example, I have around 50 links, 10 of them in the main view, and the others in folders. Of the ten in main view, three are a "group", so I put a keyword in front of them (to ensure they are sorted consecutively).

So my favourites look like this:

Keyword: Link 1
Keyword: Link 2
Keyword: Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Link 6
etc...
Folder 1
Folder 2
Folder 3
etc...

This is something I also was going to ask for. Using the keyword is how I sorted my BMs in My Atlas, and I was very excited when you put the folder feature in. It's wonderful.

However add my vote to the one which says leave the folder expanded after you click on it. I imagine it would only be a matter of turning that box's refresh off?

Yes you can do it via keywords, but why when you can have the links nicely arranged in catagory folders?

I love it, It's really great.

Suggestion: Have an option to specify a "Preferred" tab which would be displayed when entering the site. Then one could simply change the "Preferred" tab depending on upcoming events.

Originally posted by Touti
I love it, It's really great.

Suggestion: Have an option to specify a "Preferred" tab which would be displayed when entering the site. Then one could simply change the "Preferred" tab depending on upcoming events.

Set up the default tab as your preferred one, or alternatively bookmark the tab's full path (http://www.autosport...index.php?tab=X)