I'm not a native English speaker so it'll be a bit difficult for me I didn't know there is a bad word filter at all until I wrote that there seemed to be some liquid in Massa's cockpit and got the message. So I had to try to find which word is treated as bad - Massa or cockpit ;)

Anyway your work towards improvement is quite visible

need to ask if they can implement the ignore function for this

~Yes that would be great....

I can see that this is a common request so I will make it a priority update. It is difficult to do due to the way the comments are broadcast out, so it would have to be the browser that decides if it shows you the post or not, based on it knowing your list of ignored posters.

I think this will be possible so I will look in to it next week.

I must be the only one with no-one on my ignore list.


As I said, the changes are great, great job guys


But I have one more suggestion: I just posted my pre-race thoughts, and they were too long to fit in a one post, so i had to cut, check if I can post, I coudln't so paste and cut more etc. Slightly annoying, and it is easy to actually delete a part of the post this way (which would be really annoying). Maybe you could increase the allowed size of the post AND include a decreasing letter-count so It would be clear what is too much.



Edit: That might be just me, but this is about fifth time I look at the track status and go "eeek! black flag! what on earth has happend??" for a moment. Could the awaiting start flag be different colour? Or maybe an icon of all the flags, in Indy 500 fashion.

Autosport Live is very very good.

THKS Hack....

Why are times of posts no longer showing up? I like to read the threads afterwards but without the times they are hard to follow.

If you return to the commentary after it has closed, i.e refresh the page or enter from the index, you will find that the times are there to aid review.

A number of people were of the opinion that the times were not necessary when actually live, so they were removed to give a little more space for comments.

As ever, if I get strong feedback that this is the wrong decision, I can easily restore them for Monaco.

Ah, yes I see the times there now. Thanks!

I was not keen on the new format to start with but I have to say it's growing on me.

The intention was basically to stop people posting War and Peace length material in what is a very small space. Now the pane is resizable, I guess the limit could be relaxed a bit, and I also take your point on the lack of feedback. I will address

Let me have a think about alternatives on the awaiting start flag.

how about adding link to the Live section on at the top of the forums? (between the home,f1,motogp, news etc links)

Very, very cool!! Bravo!

That is on my list for sure, it just hasn't made the top yet.

The most notable change for Monaco is we now have the commentary stamped against the minutes evolved in the session or the laps in the race. This should make it a lot more friendly to read, especially after the event. Having this done automatically took up a lot of the available development time since Turkey.

I have resolved your point on the post length limit with an increase in the allowed size and feedback on approaching it, as promised.

There are also some tweaks to improve the available screen space in certain circumstances.

Finally, an update on the ignore list: There are a lot of complications involved, due to the way that Live instantly distributes the forum posts across the globe to all connected viewers. I do have a working prototype, but felt it was not yet mature or tested enough to be introduced for Monaco. All being well, this will be available for Canada.

In my screen I only see the map for the SPanish circuit, although the comments are Monaco-related.

The only thing that I would like improved is the empty white space on the right side of the screen.

Sorry about that, finger trouble

Regarding the white space, I agree we could make use of it. The problem is not everyone has white space - it depends on screen resolution. Certainly, I plan to add the option for the page to be centred like the rest of the site, and that should happen soon. After that, there are clearly more tricks available to us, so watch this space.

To all, please continue to post your suggestions here and we will keep plugging away to develop the service.

Can you keep this open later on Saturday's till at least after the GP2 Feature Race so that we can get to discuss it. At least several members were in the live forum thing ready to discussion and then it was promptly closed.

Noted

Great service, excellent for practice sessions where live timing used to be a bit meaningless without any comment on who was doing what in the session.

During the race an area I'd like to see concentrated on would be keeping an eye on pit strategies, on the TV we sometimes but not always get a caption showing how many laps of fuel were added. Would be great if the Autosport live comments could keep track of this sort of information so we have an idea who's due to pit when.

I used to think I was the only person making an effort to track the weather in the build up to the race, used to take a lot of googling to find local rain radars for each race. Now you're doing all the work for me, much easier thank.

I still get occasional "sorry, try again" error, and while this message is displayed I see the most recent comment INSIDE the post-box (I think not in the type area, but above or below. Certainly not where they should be displayed).

Interesting, thanks for the info. I think I see a reason for forum posts occasionally not going through first time and will be sorting that out.

Not sure why this would have a knock-on effect of putting posts in strange places. If you, or anyone else, sees this again in Montreal, I'd really appreciate a screen shot.

yeah, I wanted to take a screen shot, but forgot to paste it into paint cause somebody has just crashed, or something.

I have a suggestion that might be a little work to implement but I think it would be worth it.

How about having a little graphic icon for each different kind of event on the live commentary? For example, you could have graphics for a crash, overtaking, a pit stop, and so forth. Basically it would be a quick way to know what that commentary was about.

don't know if its just me,but even thought the canadian gp weather thread is 'live now' apparently there doesnt seem to be any way of actually looking at it,tried clicking on the thread itself as usual,but wont link it and so wont come up

edit-working fine now

That was down to me I'm afraid. As you say it's fine now, and will be open as normal through the rest of this week.

No worries Nigel, just thought it a bit odd thats all. Keep up the good work guys

I'm sloooow.. I just noticed all the gearbox/engine/tyre info! So useful!

I see my suggestion about keeping the live forum open for GP2 Feature races hasn't been noted, otherwise it would be open right now.

One thing I miss when using autosport.com Live, that we used to have in the RC Live forums, is the lap time history for the track, which Nigel or Hack would generally post in the Friday Practice 1 thread. I'm always interested in how this year's lap times compare to previous years. Any chance we can get this back?

If you look at the Infobox in the right-hand column, showing the track map by default, there is a tab for History which will give you the lap times from the previous season. That is our equivalent for the history posts from RC Live.

Thanks Hack, I had missed the History tab. Would still prefer info on years earlier than 2007, though. If you don't want to show previous years, how about just showing the lap record?

I'd rather not go into the years beyond the previous because space is limited and it takes a lot of time to compile and present that info. I'm not sure it is all that valuable and Forix will have the data available or you can still look through the RC Live threads.

However, the lap record is no problem, so look out for that in the history tab soon.

Thanks!

On the Valencia weather page, there is a clickable map of circuit. I guess that clicking on it should open it in higher resolution, but I get empty box instead (both in Firefox and IE). I think it could be wrong file name or a type of some sorts.

The link is correct - it also appears on the GP tab on the home page. However, the larger image is not available as yet, so I've temporarily removed the link from Live.

In the meantime, you can see a bigger map on the FIA site

Is it possible to use the ignore lists from the forums in the chat section live.autosport.com?

karlth, the short answer is no, not at the moment.

As you can appreciate, I am quite busy with the live coverage this morning but I will get back to you later with a more detailed answer.

Ok, thanks.

Thanks for your feedback. It has been a busy day at the autosport.com Live towers.

I know a number of people have requested this in the past and it certainly is on my to do list. To be honest it got shuffled down in priority as other projects and the live commentary itself took up my time.

There are complications involved. In the forum itself, the pages are generated in real time for each user based on their preferences: number of posts on each page, ignore list etc. Live uses a completely different model - it has to be far more efficient to cope with the traffic involved. Put simply, the commentary and forum posts are distilled into a series of update packages that all connected browsers read from. It's basically like a broadcast stream of messages.

It is not practical for the server to decide which updates you get and which ones you ignore. To do this I need to put the logic in the client, the scripts that run on the browser. The browser can hold a list of the posters you are ignoring and not show their posts when they come through.

The reason I didn't tackle this when it was first raised is that I need to do a lot of testing across various browsers to make sure this doesn't impact on the service overall. I don't want to introduce this half-baked, as there is a lot of potential for it to go wrong.

However, a software update is planned ahead of the Singapore race, so I will look at this again. If I'm happy it is ready for use, I will introduce it. If not, it would be an offseason project.

Thanks Hack for the feedback and it goes without saying: Thanks for all the hard work you have done on making live.autosport.com the necessary part of the GP weekend it is.

Another suggestion I would make is to have a "pause" button for the live forum. As it is now, it's very hard to scroll back during an event because with every auto-refresh the chat thread moves back down to the bottom.

Should be able to sort that out, thanks.

An updated version of the autosport.com Live software has been installed ahead of this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix. Taking into account the feedback in this thread, the work has focused on enhancing the user experience in the Live Forum area.

The following changes have been introduced:

• Ignore List*: Posters that you choose to ignore (via the User CP link within the BB) will no longer appear in your view of the Live threads. Note that you will have to refresh the commentary after adding a poster to the ignore list before the additional filter is applied.
• Enable/disable Auto Scrolling: A checkbox is now present at the top of the forum pane. When ticked (by default), the discussion will continuously scroll to show the latest posts. When the tick is removed, the scrolling will stop, even if new posts arrive, allowing for easier review of the discussion.
• Post Tools: Additional tools are available to introduce more of the features from the BB. By clicking on the poster's name on an individual post, a toolbox replaces the post form, allowing you to view the member's profile, PM the user and report an inappropriate post to the moderators. Simply click BACK TO QUICKPOST to clear the tools and restore the post box.
• Double Posting: A guard has been introduced against accidental double clicking of the post button, which has occasionally resulted in duplicate posts. The messages you receive on the posting process have also been improved.
• Improved Responsiveness: Your own posts should appear more quickly within the Live Forum, once they have been accepted by the BB.
• Behind the Scenes: Improved workflow for the commentary team.
• New Browsers: Improved compatibility with new browser releases - Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and Google Chrome.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback so far. It has made a real difference. As you can see, we will certainly consider all suggestions and implement changes if at all possible.

Please post here if you spot any problems or have further suggestions for me to look at.

* Testing has identified an issue that the ignore list is not applied to the Live Forum on commentaries that have ended. This will be addressed as soon as possible.

Looking forward to testing it this weekend.

Thanks for the continuous updates Live receives and detailed look at any feedback you recieve. Your doing a great job

Nice!

hack, thanks! enable/disable auto scrolling is welcome.

hack, self feedback is blazing fast now

Live page title:

"the authority on live Forumula One, F1, motorsport minute-by-minute text commentary"

Drat, must have been thinking about forum stuff at the time

Will fix ASAP, thanks.