We are pleased to announce the debut of a new service on the site, autosport.com Live

autosport.com Live is an evolution of the ever-popular live commentary threads in the RC-Live forum over the past five years. Fulfilling the needs of Formula One fans seeking the latest information on the track action over a Grand Prix weekend, the new service will include:

* An automatically-refreshing live commentary system, giving you the latest updates as they happen.
* Live text commentary covering all on-track aspects of the Grand Prix weekend.
* Interactive discussion and fans comment thread within the live text area.
* Live track status, weather information and breaking news.
* The most detailed race weekend weather forecasts anywhere on the internet.
* An easy-to-read format requiring no scrolling, page navigation or refreshing to follow along.
* Planned expansion into other racing series.

Whether you are on the move, stuck in the office or just want to know what is going on, autosport.com Live is the latest innovation that will bring the action straight to your browser.

Several months of work have gone into taking the live commentary concept forward, and automatically updating commentary was a high priority in bringing this project to fruition. The live commentary now updates before your eyes - no longer do you need to hammer the refresh button.

The automatic updating system makes extensive use of AJAX technology and requires javascript to be enabled on your browser. If you are finding that updates are not being delivered automatically, please check your browser settings.

As we are making use of some of the more innovative web technologies, it is inevitable that there will be problems with some browser configurations. Our final testing phase has made us aware of some styling quirks in certain circumstances and we are looking to address those in time for the next Grand Prix.

Launching this site has been a lot like launching a new racing car. There has been a scramble to get things ready, and what you see now is merely the start of the development curve. I’d ask you to be patient if we encounter reliability problems – but hopefully it won’t be like watching those early January tests where the flat-bed trucks do more laps than the racing cars.

Please let us know what you think. Post your feedback in this thread and we will do our best to address any issues raised as quickly as possible.

Allo, Allo, Allo...who's moved up into the ritzy neighbourhood then

All kidding aside may I be the first to congratulate Nige and Hack and wish AUTOSPORT.COM LIVE all the very best.
I shall be watching/reading/conversing along with you all tomorrow morning!!

EDIT: After having a look I think it looks very slick and professional.
I will however rue the loss of the ability to post links or pictures to clutter up the servers
I understand how this was a administration nightmare but for me at least it was one of the things that made it fun.
I just hope the hospital cleanliness of the place does not reduce the enjoyment down to the dust bin level

Jp

All say only one thing: WOW

In bocca lupo for tomorrow, then!

A huge step forward.

Nice, thanks guys and congrats

Will the forum section be archived in some way?

edit: one thing I'm not sure aboy is that I use TV card, and I could fit Tv window, board, and live timing on my screen without clicking from one to another. I don't think it will be possible now. But of course that is the price of progress. It looks very good.

edit: will the board window will also be auto-refreshable?

The commentaries and forum posts will be retained permanently and you will be able to access previous events via the drop down on the main page.

The forum comments also refresh automatically to all readers of the page.

great, thanks! The fan interaction is huge part of all the fan for me

I think the font used to display date and hour in the forum box should be smaller, and I wonder whether date is necessary.. it makes some sense in the weather "thread", if only for historic purposes, but I don't think it plays any role during actual race weekend - dates are easily checkable elsewhere, and here they only take space from comments. Still, I think the date/hour font should be way smaller, they simply don't play a big role in the live situation, and that's mainly what it's for.

The date is only shown on multiple-day commentaries such as the weather thread. But I can look at making that smaller.

Excellent news, great service

Oh, no need then. I simply thought it won't be worth the space in the live threads, as we hit incredible posts per minute rates at times.

BTW, is the forum section on the forum server or autosport one? Cause live link at the front page will probably create additional traffic, and that already was an issue..



Yikes, it looks like I'm only bitching left and right. It really seems like well organized and though-out affair. And it looks great, with track map (using 2004 pole as reference. Someone should notify FIA about the chicane). Many thanks for your effort, guys!

BTW, as for the maps, I know it's probably not up to you, but I personally think the old turns numbering way far better than the new one (which was used in Bahrain, with turns 7, 7a etc). The new way is also confusing when you have turns number mesmerized.

The whole thing is hosted on one of Haymarket's very capable server farms. We are very aware of the potential traffic and have done lots of work to handle it.

from the RC thread:



I think that asking about unknowable information ruled, cause more often than not it wasn't that unknownable. Will you (Nigel and Hack) be still reading our comments?

Of course we will, and we will include answers to forum questions as often as we can.

Awesome stuff, well done guys.

Oh my god. What a great new section. Thanks!

Why is the width/height of the text boxes fixed ?

If I maximise my browser window, the text only uses about a third of my screen.

Also I'd like to be able to move the break between the live commentary and the live forum, up and down, to resize those text areas, as the session progresses.

Other than that, pretty good

Awesome format. Great job!

Seems like a nice feautre this, though a little annoying when you can't decide how you want it placed. I'd prefer to have them side by side.

do you realise what sort of talk flood there will be in race? 'member posts' window is way too small as people type in chat-style

Do I need a subscription to see member's live chat ?

edit: got it

really cool

Job well done.

With Mozilla Firefox the buttons "POST" and "CLEAR" below the text edit window are not visible. At least on my PC. With IE they are seen but I usually prefer Mozilla.

I reckon this section should be made more IRC style, dont allow users to put empty lines in their posts etc.

The :\
(colon and backslash) smiley seems not to work. Maybe because of the backslash. Only ":" is displayed.

...and the auto-scrolling chatbox has the memory span of a goldfish

yup... during a race a thread works better, especially for people who missed the start

also maybe the autoscroll should be with the newest posts at the bottom

LOL. It would be nice to be able to undock the chat window so we can have the Nice ITV web coverage with chat window on top

You'd should be able to reverse the order in which the posts come in and have the possiblity of having both commentaries side by side.

one irritating thing: the scrolling only works for the "offical" frame, to write a comment I have to make the window larger, so i can't see the stream/tv card window

Works fine in Mac OS X Safari

I have managed to shrink both windows so I can see chat window and live coverage at same time

beej: me too, but to post I still have make the autosport window full screen (or manually epxpand it)


but the autorefresh is ass GREAT!

What a difference a year makes, ITV-stream, Eurosport commentary, live timing and now Autosport-live.

I see one's ignore list does not apply here
Jp

am i the only one with problems with refreshing of the comments box? I just got 50 comments at once

Mine is refreshing by itself, one at a time

feature request for this site: please highlight new posts in top/bottom pane, and clear the highlight when I click on the pane (separately for each pane)

One thing that're missing (which I only notice because I'm a Honda fan and tend to look further down the timesheets) are the live times. Were they not included for licensing issues?

I must say well done to Autosport, this new feature is excellent

Interesting; I can chat & watch F1.com live timing, watch live timing & ITV-F1 or chat & watch ITV but I can't chat, watch ITV & see the F1.com live timing..

Still 2 out of the 3 at any one time is pretty good

thanks for the service - it is great

Cheers Autosport. Now all you need are the live times and live video running on the right of this page.

My comments screen freezed for about 10 minutes in the middle of the session, but otherwise it went very smoothly. Thanks, Nigel and Hack

Hwoever, I think quick post box should be at the bottom, not to the side. It will make far easier to fit live timing and stream/tv card widnow at one side with autoport on the other.

yeah i like this new one.
put a video and i subscribe

It would be nice to have a view where live comments as well as members' comments were all in one thread. That was one of the features I liked in the old live forum thread...

I think it would be a lot better to move the quick post box to the bottom of the forum comments page (
and move newst post to the bottom, too) so the page would be fully functional even at half width so we could watch live timing and stream/tv cards windows at the same time (in the other half of the screen). The way it is now I have to either manually resize the autorsport window or make it full screen to post, and then resize it again, which results in my clicking on wrong buttons


Oh, and the sideways scroll only works for the officall window, not for the forum comments.
I also had about a 10 minutes freeze in comments during the FP, but it could have been my browser (it crashed later during the same session).

Other than that, great work! Not having to hit refresh button every 15 seconds is great!