BBC Radio Web Page Layout

[Dphillipson]

BBC web page design changed again a couple of days ago, since when I note:
1. A day's radio used to fill 3 pages of my PC display (at preferred 1600 x 900)
It now fills 5 pages, apparently because non-programming links are posted at
the top and the "Listen Now" button below each programme entry instead of alongside it.
2. The familiar "Listen Now" hot button survives. It used to call up a sound track
directly. Now "Listen Now" calls another page, devoted to the individual programme,
with its own "Listen Now" button.
3. At this writing (Tuesday 1.30 a.m. GMT) "On Air Now" reports Afternoon on 3
(scheduled for 2 p.m. GMT.)
I suppose the changes are oriented towards an audience that listens to radio
on cell phones with tiny screens, the programmers are not clever enough
(or considerate enough) to maintain design features suitable for PCs, or else
estimate the habits of Radio 3's audience are the same as any other audience's.

[David-G]

I take it you are referring to the schedule pages? I still have the "Listen Now" buttons at the side!

But as you say they now link to the programme page, which you also get to if you click on the title of the programme. I can't see the point in having a "Listen Now" button at all now.

[Bryn]

They seem to have made a right old mess of the job. The duration shown for "Episode 1" of last nights concert is 30 minute, whereas the file actually runs for some 2 hours 45 minutes, and where has the ability to navigate within an iPlayer 'listen again' file gone? Oh, and how now does one select the data rate appropriate to one's Internet connection?

A case of "if it ain't broken, let's break it"?

Ah, I now find that if you launch the Radio Player (button to the left of the start arrow) that gives navigability and the correct duration. User friendly? I think not.

[David-G]

Bryn, have you discovered how to select the data rate, to ensure one is listening in HD?

OK, I found it - actually to the right of the start arrow. The two little squares. Unbelievably user-unfriendly!

[Bryn]

Bryn, have you discovered how to select the data rate, to ensure one is listening in HD?

Yes, that too may be selected via the Radio Player link to the left of the start arrow. It's the 'round the houses' aspect that annoys me.

[doversoul1]

I have only tried (Listen Again) Through the Night so far but being able to listen again/now without having to have a separate window (page?) is a great improvement.

But I still don’t see the point of the duplication of the play list (thankfully, not of TTN). Sometimes the list grows as the programme progresses, even the list of a recorded programme. Most annoying.

[Resurrection Man]

..... the programmers are not clever enough
(or considerate enough) to maintain design features suitable for PCs,...

Actually they are! If you look at the schedule on smartphone then it renders differently to onscreen on a computer.

I do agree with you, though. The new changes are a step in the wrong direction. As has already been said, "If it ain't bust, don't fix-it".

[OldTechie]

on.
3. At this writing (Tuesday 1.30 a.m. GMT) "On Air Now" reports Afternoon on 3
(scheduled for 2 p.m. GMT.)

I thought they would have fixed it by now, but no luck. It is browser dependent. Most browsers cache data in order to speed loading. In IE9 (and IE10) the "On Now" programme is the first one it saw when you first logged on to the new layout.

Tests below done this evening at 22:40. On air was Night Waves: Keats, Michael Chabon, The Ash Tree

It works correctly in some user agents:

Firefox:


Opera:



But it is faulty in others:

IE9:

This one links to Radio 3 Live In Concert from Tues 9th October (when I manually cleared the IE9 cache for the BBC domain.) The Steve Reich piece was the first itme in the programme.

Chrome:

This links to Essential Classics on Tues 24 July, when I first opened a new-style programme in Chrome. I don't know where the Don Quixote comes from - it did not seem to be in that programme.

Safari:

This links to today's In Tune. That was when I previously opened Safari today. Safari seems to display correctly again the next day. I don't know where the Granados pieces came from.

I've tried it in various Windows versions and I get the same Internet Explorer fault using XP/IE8, Windows 7/IE9 and Windows 8/IE10. It's a bit better in Windows 2000 with IE6. I don't have IE7 installed anywhere.

It is also broken on an iPad (iOS6) in both Safari and Chrome.

It would be nice if the BBC provided some way to report such faults. Perhaps that will consider testing their work eventually.

[french frank]

I have five browsers but only use Firefox regularly. For weeks the current programme was showing as In Tune - Grimeborn Festival, but having read your post yesterday I cleared the cache and the programme then showed correctly as Choral Evensong. And that's what it still is!

All the other browsers are showing the Breakfast programme, but as it's the first time I've accessed the page from them there wouldn't be any cache.

So, is this a fault of Firefox or the web design? Or what?

[OldTechie]

I don't see the problem using Firefox in Windows, but the MAC version may cache things differently. The problem is with the BBC site. The browser asks whether the information has changed, and the BBC server says it has not, so the browser uses the version it already has.

I found a way to feed ths problem back to the BBC (radiofeedback@bbc.co.uk) that may get to the developers.

I sent them basically my post above plus this anaylsis:

Analysis:

Tested 17^th October using Wireshark to monitor IE9:

Your code causes the browser to retrieve the required information from (in the case of radio 3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/onairpane...bc_radio_three

The sent request was:

GET /radio/onairpanel/include/bbc_radio_three HTTP/1.1
x-requested-with: XMLHttpRequest
Accept-Language: en-gb
Referer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nb1fy
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)
Host: www.bbc.co.uk
If-Modified-Since: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:39:00 GMT
If-None-Match: "dcca48101505dd86b703689a604fe3c4"
DNT: 1
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cookie: ckns_policy=111; s1=50579DE37BF10315; BBC-UID=c5c0b587499dcf1230aa5ee7cbb300Mozilla/5.0%20(compatible%3b%20MSIE%209.0%3b%20Windows%20N T%206.1%3b%20WOW64%3b%20Trident/5.0); pulse=1; BGUID=85f0d5abf3d3915bbc87e2df018e7d507b033c9dbe38 a3c93355ea3dd3de62f8; s_vnum=1350749600735%26vn%3D4; s_nr=1348157627058; ckpf_ww_mobile_js=on; MYLOC=hfhf; identitytoken=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Your server returned:

HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:37:45 GMT
Connection: Keep-Alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=4, max=197
ETag: "dcca48101505dd86b703689a604fe3c4"
Expires: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:38:07 GMT
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0, s-maxage=30, must-revalidate
Vary: X-CDN

This is wrong and causes IE9 to use its cached version from 9^th October. It should have returned the new data with a 200 OK code. Note that changing the document or browser mode to older versions does not fix this. Equally, changing the User-Agent string in Firefox will not introduce the fault because that does not change the caching scheme.

This may be of interest... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2...xplorer-9.aspx

[OldTechie]

Just noticed that the BBC has fixed the On Air panel so it works properly.

[Resurrection Man]

Excellent detective work, OldTechie.