Ö÷²¥´óÐã

"There have been no comments made here yet."

Can't resist that!

Good changes! Now for putting the BIG PICTURE on a diet?

Regards
ed

Steve,

Your new link goes to only the a section of available progs.
/radio4/programmes/a-z/by/a
Nick's suggestion would be better:
/radio4/programmes/a-z/player

The new link to "all genres" is a bit redundant, and a waste of space.

Still having text-overlap problems due to zooming to make the smallest fonts readable. Thee result is similar in Firefox, Opera, and Seamonkey. It isn't fatal, but irritating. A solution might be using fewer font sizes/styles (or less different ones).

Otherwise, good progress

³§±ô²¹¾±²Ô³Ùé
ed

I endorse the first part of Hesiodos' comment #2.

As for 'good progress', I am as yet far from sharing that sentiment. I believe you have underlying structural problems concerning the taxonomies of 'genre' and 'format'. I do not know if you have inherited these problems from the larger world of iPlayer or have created them.

Changing subject:

1 How many fields does iPlayer have for the description of an individual programme?

2 What do you call those fields?

3 Does iPlayer have access to the equivalent fields used in the Radio Times?

Russ

P.S. It would be nice to have advance news, at least in outline mission, of the planned further revisions.

Leigh,

One of the most important aspects of change management from the listeners point of view is acknowledging when things are for the better:

so a HUGE THANKYOU to you and the team for the link on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã page to the totality of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 4 output -
/radio4/programmes/a-z

best regards
nick

Steve,

First of all, thanks for your responses and clarifications, and for passing on our complaints/observations to those of suitable pay-grade...

"Listen live" is NOT working, at least for me. All other iplayer functions work fine.

Thanks to whoever corrected the "All current Radio 4 programmes" link. I still feel the link to the "all Genres" is a waste of space (as is the page it leads to).

Page looks OK if you can read microscopic fonts, and the problem persists when I switch tabs to this blog, as firefox (at least) seems to 'remember' my zoom preference and apply it to all sites from bbc.co.uk.... So if I want readable blog font, I have to zoom up two stops, and the homepage goes into serious text overlap.

The techies who design the web pages need to coordinate with those who are (re-)designing the blogs, and get the font sizes more similar.

Here's hoping for eventual proof that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã is indeed the greatest communications organisation on the planet.

;-)
ed

Dear Steve
Can I ask perhaps a silly but simple question - what exactly does "listen again" now mean on the new website? It used to mean that the programme could be listened to again in any form but it now seems to apply only to programmes available on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Iplayer.

E.g. at the link below:
/programmes/b00b45s0

we are told that a programme on Bookclub is no longer available:
"Availability: Sorry, this programme is not available to listen again. Why?" If you click on that link you are told this is due to "rights restrictions"

But, the EXACT same programme is still available to listen again in the archive:

/radio4/arts/bookclub_archive.shtml

So the first link is misleading, it should not tell listeners that the programme is "not available to listen again" because, thankfully, it still is. This needs to be clarified. At the very least tell people that in order to listen again they need to check the programme's archive. As it stand this page leads listeners to believe that the archive of this programme has been removed.

A help page devoted to Radio 4 ONLY (instead of the generic one for the entire Ö÷²¥´óÐã network) and explaining how the new website works and providing some navigation tips for long time listeners would be most helpful.

The new system means having to check for programmes in a number of different places and not believing what you are told as it is no longer inaccurate information.

This is the second time I've asked this question about the conflicting information provided by two links to the exact same broadcast of a programme - please check these links and please help.

Dear Radio 4 bloggers

When will the Radio 4 blog site provide a thing that is called Feeds? Please point it out to me if I've missed it on the pages which are unmissable. :-|

Apologies for this off-topic comment and thank you.

Sophie

Soffie Wiffie,

Look at the right hand end of your address bar (the place where this page's URL address is), and you should see a "feed" icon. click on it.

Good luck
ed

Hi Steve,

"any day now we'll be getting a new design for the blog which will include a big RSS button as it should have done all along! "

Will that be the "new look for blogs" which received almost as much negative response as the "new look" Radio 4 website...?

The "new look" does not recognise blockquote, but there is to offset quoted material.

At least it's (slightly) more compatible with the new look homepage in the matter of font sizes...

Plus ça change!

;-)

Plus ça change!

Several times on Radio 7's site I have been asked to complete survey's about the site - perhaps it's time now to take a structured approach to listener feedback On Radio 4 and stop hiding behind the "it's the few not the many" excuse. It's taken me a while to participate in this feedback thread, partly as there are a number of threads running and I wasn't sure where to jump in and also because it seems as if technical issues such as links not working are dealt with (which is great) but bigger issues (such as the "in your face" pictures on the home page which really are not the point for radio and do take up valuable space) being batted out of the way with comments such as "it's lovely to see what Alan Ayckbourn looks like" (bowbrick) - the picture abuse on the site seems to be quite a widespread concern, people want the text back, and should be taken seriously.

Like other listeners I do want to be able to see the full list of the Afternoon Play with a single click to the site - and from there I want to look at The Friday Play, the Saturday play, Woman's Hour Drama etc which I used to be able to do and that way plan my listening or "listen again" plans for the week - not able to do that any more however I can look at 17 different types of drama genre which frankly I have tried and given up on but without clicking back onto the Friday Play or Saturday site I can't easily see what drama is on this week. You have obviously been indexing and tagging all the output and have decided this is what we want - it isn't! I tried the Crime Genre and pulled up an episode of The Archers which was "Helen solves the mystery...." so those keywords are not really very helpul. Please restore the links to the other programme drama sites rather than the genres.

There's so much more one could say - but frankly I have just given up - and now just do podcasting and very little listen again.

lOverall, this feels like a site that was put together with little research or user input, and is a triumph of style - it looks pretty good - over substance - it's just user friendly and doesn't meet user needs. It's hard to believe this was any serious user testing was done before it was dumped on us. So I suggest you get togther a mechanism for capturing input about the site in a structured way - not difficult in a Web 2.0 world - and then the endless blogging can stop and you can begin to work on addressing the more general issues.

Glad you're listening to about 1% of feedback. Now how about tackling the rest?

For example I have just noticed that the schedule for the full week doesn't observe any horizontal logic: a programme at 11.30 a.m. on Saturday appears at a lower visual level than a programme at 2 p.m. on Friday. This makes it horribly difficult to find things at a glance. Whilst the site generally has far too much white space, a little more on the full week's schedule page would make it much easier to read and also give a feeling on the length of the programmes.
And the print could get smaller too.

Steve, thanks for the link, I'd not used it before - and it is interesting but still a bit random for me - and I do think that in general it's the structure that needs to be thought through more thoroughly. Lack of content is not an issue - it's how people clearly navigate through it that's key. Of course you can't please everyone and anything different takes longer but there are a lot of smart people out there who are struggling with this and if people still have issues at this stage then I think it's less about resistance to change and more about a poor user experience; seems like too much focus on content (and the dreaded pictures) not enough about structure. I look forward to hearing of plans for more structured feedback and reporting.

I should perhaps add, Leigh, that I am perfectly happy with the new Radio 4 website. Ignore these latter-day Luddites, Steve. They have not got a clue. Cheers (morning coffee)!

;)

The "new look" has arrived!

Anyone who wants to do special characters,
£ ¥ & OR & á é í ó ú, etc.,

Instructions

• "And for a way to (slightly) indent quoted material"

Plus ça change....

P.S. It'll only show up right after you "refresh"
;-)

@Steve Bowbrick

I commented before on an earlier post asking to have the archive arranged by date rather than title

You kindly responded but I missed the response until today.

But your response fell into the trap laid by the iplayer/archive confusion that you're trying to get clarified for mzantsi.

I'm not talking about the iplayer 7 days limit (which, incidentally, really should be configured to pick up what the producers of a program allow surely?).

I'm talking about the old style "Archive" page:

/radio4/excessbaggage/excessbaggage_archive.shtml

The archive used to show programs by broadcast date. Now it only shows by title - which is just useless when it goes back for years!

That is the page that I'm hoping can be changed!

Leigh
What is the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's infatuation with pictures?
For example, on /radio4/programmes/a-z there is a picture for every programme entry.
Why? These pictures provide little or no additional information and just mean that we have more scrolling up and down to do.

If you open any book and look at the Table of Contents or index you will notice that publishers don't put pictures next to each entry so why do it on a website?

Are you under the belief the website looks 'fancier' with more pictures.
It seems even more unnecessary considering that Radio is a audio medium.

Finally, this comment can be equally applied to the Radio4 homepage.

I would appreciate some response from the webteam to explain why the pages are padded out with so many pictures and why that enormous picture on the homepage?
thanks

Steve - any joy with your offer in your #5?

Russ

Hey! Excellent - it seems that my please have been heard. There are now old Excess baggage programs available by date going back to 2007.

That's great!

Thanks for listening! :)

Hang on a minute! I take it all back!

There's a listing of the progam's air dates but that's it.

That's worse than useless! There's no description of what the program was so there's no way to look it up in the archive.

This is pointless!

I still can't go back to a date and listen to the Excess baggage for that date.

Please, please, please can something be done - like sorting the archive here in order:

/radio4/excessbaggage/excessbaggage_archive.shtml

Oh hang on... going to a page from that link takes you to something like:

/radio4/excessbaggage/index_20071006.shtml

That episode is the 6th of October 2007 (2007-10-06) so with a little URL jiggery pokery it can be done.

But only by someone that knows how to do that (my dad would never work that out or have the patience to hunt-and-peck type the new URL).

At least there's a work-around - how about a proper fix???

I'm really trying to get on with the new site.
Still failing.
When I select the Category 'Entertainment' it takes me to a page that tells me there are no programmes in this category. I don't believe it. Surely Radio4 has not given up on entertainment?
On the positive side, the page with this disheartening information is at least free from pictures...

I have just understood - the whole site has been designed by graphics students! I tried a link from Woman's Hour to Health and Well being and got four little graphics because of course I can't understand a programme title without a little graphic beside it.
So "health check" has to have a picture of pills, "Medical Matters" has surgical instruments, "You and Yours" has a smiling presenter etc etc

So if you can't read and you're using the new website, it's great.

And there's lots of nice white space beside all these probably because they've spent so much money on the web design that there's not so much to make programmes with. Why else?

Thankyou, Steve. I've been munging around lately too. I've read the latest schema, and it would appear the answer to my question on how many fields iPlayer has available for what I simplistically called the 'description' of an individual programme might be three:

- the 'short_synopsis'
- the 'medium_synopsis'
- the 'long_synopsis'

This is a wild guess on my part of course, but in an attempt to further the matter, I wanted to see if I could wonder better than Michael's "too complex to answer quickly in words". I detect Michael doesn't like words.

Whilst Michael acknowledges that iPlayer has access to the Radio Times' synopsis field, it is not clear from his reply that any of the above correspond to that RT synopsis field. Nor is it clear whether the RT synopsis field could be used in iPlayer. This is the issue I am trying to pursue. This is what my April comment here was all about.

Let's take a real example, last Tuesday's Afternoon Play 'The Granny Killers'. The initial R4 Afternoon Play and initial iPlayer page synopsis is: "Black comedy by David Hodgson. Chris and Liddy plan to kill their money-crazed granny." I assume this is the 'short_synopsis'?

The synopsis given in the expanded Afternoon Play and iPlayer pages is: "Black comedy by David Hodgson. Twins Chris and Liddy want to kill their granny, the shoulder-padded, high-heeled, money-crazed head of a property empire. But granny has other plans - she wants to kill her new husband on their wedding night." I assume this is the 'medium_synopsis'?

Munging around in one's trusty Radio Times, like yer do (and soo much better than the iPlayer dross), I find: "Chris and Liddy are twins who want to kill their granny. But granny has other plans: she wants to kill her new husband on their wedding night. A zany comedy by David Hodgson."

Is this RT entry the 'long_synopsis'? And if it is, is there any technical reason why it couldn't be included in the expanded iPlayer Afternoon Play entry? And if it isn't, I propose that the RT entry should be used in the expanded iPlayer Afternoon Play entry.

Russ

P.S. Who owns 'Billings'?

P.P.S. I note the reality of categorisation is now dawning, since the play was categorised as 'Other' in iPlayer drama terms. Ha! - I think I now have a better feel for the meaning of the verb 'munge'... [imagine suitable smiley here]