Re: pop art

[Nick Lord]

Can we please stop this "discussion" on this list? It has nothing to do
with get_iplayer and is needlessly clogging my mailbox.

Best regards,
Nick Lord

On Thu, 2015-09-03 at 13:47 +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 01:17:03AM +0100, C E Macfarlane wrote:
> 
> >And BTW your premise about about
> > the Terrestrial TV Calculator is also mistaken, because the page was NEVER
> > DESIGNED to work on a mobile
> 
> Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were presenting relevant examples. I didn't
> realise that you thought that the way to convince someone of the
> correctness of your argument is to present stuff completely irrelevant
> to the point at hand. What we're arguing about, in case you'd forgotten,
> is making stuff work well in as many places as is practical.
> 
> If I'd known that then I would have elegantly refuted your silly
> argument by telling you in great detail about the cake that I ate in
> the station cafe at Port Erin.
> 




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Re: pop art

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 01:17:03AM +0100, C E Macfarlane wrote:

>And BTW your premise about about
> the Terrestrial TV Calculator is also mistaken, because the page was NEVER
> DESIGNED to work on a mobile

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were presenting relevant examples. I didn't
realise that you thought that the way to convince someone of the
correctness of your argument is to present stuff completely irrelevant
to the point at hand. What we're arguing about, in case you'd forgotten,
is making stuff work well in as many places as is practical.

If I'd known that then I would have elegantly refuted your silly
argument by telling you in great detail about the cake that I ate in
the station cafe at Port Erin.

-- 
David Cantrell | top google result for "topless karaoke murders"

We found no search results for "crotchet".  Did you mean "crotch"?

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Re: pop art

[Jim web]

In article <20150901164651.ge9...@bytemark.barnyard.co.uk>, David Cantrell
 wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 09:53:49AM +0100, Jim web wrote:

> > FWIW and IMHO The problem is that the BBC pages are generated by
> > people who have no clue about using simple basic HTML and take for
> > granted what browsers. etc, people will use.

> This is not the case. They have clue, but they think that supporting the
> 99.9% of people who use something vaguely modern is more important than
> catering for people who deliberately crippled their own experience.

Well, this isn't the place to argue about it at length. But in fairness the
people I know at the BBC simply aren't that deberately arrogant. However I
don't know if the relevant people simply don't realise that many may choose
to disable JavaScript, etc, for various reasons.

Afraid presenting arguments like "vaguely modern" is the kind of rhetoric
employed by politicians wanting to cloud the real issues.

It also fails to deal with factors like sending page layout, etc, designed
for phones to desktop machines.

No point in repeating here what I and others said beyond that. Take it to
the newsgroups if you want to argue.

Jim

-- 
Electronics  http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio  http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc  http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html


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Re: pop art

[michael norman]

On 09/02/2015 06:25 PM, David Cantrell wrote:

On Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 05:12:58PM +0100, C E Macfarlane wrote:


Yes, for example, for security reasons, and a number of mobile browsers do
not support JavaScript:
http://quirksmode.org/m/table.html


Name one that is commonly used by consumers in the UK.


 And if you have deliberately turned it off (either by configuration or
 by using some hopelessly crippled browser that doesn't implement it),
 then that's your choice.

As above, it may actually have been the platform manufacturer's choice.


True. But then you chose a crippled platform instead of just a crippled
browser.


The BBC can't take account of every possible weird thing that users do.

They can very easily ensure that their content loads on as many different
devices as possible by ensuring that their content is as simple as possible.


Perhaps they should send you the shooting script instead of letting you
watch Dr Who on iPlayer then.


:-( Do not use JS, PHP, etc to edit content according to the 
platform
making the request, rather keep the content simple enough to load properly
on any platform.


Trouble is that means that you're dumbing your application down to the
lowest common denominator. I'm sure that the handful of people using
Acorns and Amigas and WAP browsers on their Nokia 8110s will be
grateful, but the overwhelming majority will just be pissed off that
you've delivered something that is so horribly backward compared to the
much better experience they get from everywhere else.


You might as well complain that you can't
watch the TV because you chose to glue some socks to the screen.

It is not what the user may be doing wrong that is under discussion here,
but what the BBC is doing wrong.  See below ...


No, it really is the user choosing to limit their experience.


I presume you would agree that it is a Good Thing to try to send
appropriate stuff to the various different platforms?


NO!!!  NO!!!  NO!!!  That is the WHOLE POINT!!!  It's a BAD, BAD, BAD thing
to try to send appropriate content to different platforms!!!  That way lies
an insane and bloody mess and a site maintenance nightmare!!!


Not really, not if you do it carefully.


You need to read up about Object-Orientating-Programming (OOP) in general
and Model-View-Controller (MVC) in particular, both of which are key
concepts to good GUI design.


Yes dear. Do you also give your grandmother egg-sucking lessons?


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z
http://www.macfh.co.uk/JavaJive/AudioVisualTV/TerrestrialTV/TerrestrialCalcu
lator.php

The BBC Programmes A-Z page previously linked comes out at 0.02, while the
most complicated page on my own site, which calculates from user input which
direction to point a TV aerial, and draws maps of and a vertical terrain
profile along the resulting signal path, comes out at 0.16.  This is a
massive difference, the more so when you consider that, unlike my own page
which works very hard for its living, the BBC page's content is essentially
static, it never needs to change!


One of those works well on my phone and quickly gets me the information
I want, the other is an ugly mess that requires all kinds of scrolling
up and down and left and right. So much for your GUI design skills. It's
almost as if the BBC's one was intended to work well across multiple
platforms and had some thought put into the design, and you just didn't
give a toss.

Perhaps you're the one who needs to go and read about OOP etc, although
personally speaking I don't find my in-depth knowledge to be much use
when it comes to GUIs. Far better IME to out-source the work to someone
who knows GUI design and implementation.


Fascinating as all of this might be how does it relate to GIP ?

M

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RE: pop art

[C E Macfarlane]

Please see below for further OT discussion, otherwise please ignore ...

www.macfh.co.uk/CEMH.html

> Name one that is commonly used by consumers in the UK.

It is interesting that you claim to have worked on iPlayer, yet you do not
seem to be aware of the BBC's own guidelines wrt to JavaScript:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/accessibility/mobile/scripts-and
-dynamic-content/javascript-alternatives

> True. But then you chose a crippled platform instead of just
> a crippled
> browser.

See above.

> > :-( Do not use JS, PHP, etc to edit content
> according to the platform
> > making the request, rather keep the content simple enough
> to load properly
> > on any platform.
>
> Trouble is that means that you're dumbing your application down to the
> lowest common denominator. I'm sure that the handful of people using
> Acorns and Amigas and WAP browsers on their Nokia 8110s will be
> grateful, but the overwhelming majority will just be pissed off that
> you've delivered something that is so horribly backward
> compared to the
> much better experience they get from everywhere else.

That's just the point, I do NOT get a better experience from the BBC.
Whether on a desktop or mobile, even for the simplest content, BBC pages
take absurdly long to load.

> > > You might as well complain that you can't
> > > watch the TV because you chose to glue some socks to the screen.
> > It is not what the user may be doing wrong that is under
> discussion here,
> > but what the BBC is doing wrong.  See below ...
>
> No, it really is the user choosing to limit their experience.

No, as I've already demonstrated, the BBC is filling the pages with
unnecessary crap.

> > > I presume you would agree that it is a Good Thing to try to send
> > > appropriate stuff to the various different platforms?
> >
> > NO!!!  NO!!!  NO!!!  That is the WHOLE POINT!!!  It's a
> BAD, BAD, BAD thing
> > to try to send appropriate content to different
> platforms!!!  That way lies
> > an insane and bloody mess and a site maintenance nightmare!!!
>
> Not really, not if you do it carefully.

The BBC obviously have not done it carefully enough.

> > You need to read up about Object-Orientating-Programming
> (OOP) in general
> > and Model-View-Controller (MVC) in particular, both of which are key
> > concepts to good GUI design.
>
> Yes dear. Do you also give your grandmother egg-sucking lessons?

They seem to be needed in your case.

>   > http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z
>   >
>   >
http://www.macfh.co.uk/JavaJive/AudioVisualTV/TerrestrialTV/TerrestrialCalcu
>   > lator.php
>   >
>   > The BBC Programmes A-Z page previously linked comes out at 0.02, while
the
>   > most complicated page on my own site, which calculates from user input
which
>   > direction to point a TV aerial, and draws maps of and a vertical 
> terrain
>   > profile along the resulting signal path, comes out at 0.16.  This is a
>   > massive difference, the more so when you consider that, unlike my own
page
>   > which works very hard for its living, the BBC page's content is
essentially
>   > static, it never needs to change!

> One of those works well on my phone and quickly gets me the information
> I want, the other is an ugly mess that requires all kinds of scrolling
> up and down and left and right. So much for your GUI design skills.

It was a worst case analysis  -  I took one of the *simplest* pages on the
BBC site relevant to iPlayer, and compared it to the *most complicated* page
on my site, and, despite this unbalanced comparison, my complex page still
scores a better code density than the trivially simple BBC one, which means
that to load an identical amount of visible content, my page would load
quicker, though actually it is overall a much bigger page, so takes longer.
If I'd tried to make a more like for like comparison, I'd have chosen, say,
the site map/index on my site, which scores .22, ten times better than the
BBC one, and loads on my mobile in 10s, and is perfectly usable thereon,
whereas the BBC page takes 35s to load despite it having actually only just
over a fifth of the visible content of mine!  THAT is typical of BBC pages
across the site, and THAT is the problem.  (And BTW your premise about about
the Terrestrial TV Calculator is also mistaken, because the page was NEVER
DESIGNED to work on a mobile, it was designed to be used on a desktop back
in the days when mobiles couldn't hope to load such a page.  The fact that
nevertheless every day many people are able to use it on a mobile is if
anything a tribute to the original desktop design of such an involved and
complicated page, but it is one of about a dozen pages on my site that I
wish to improve on a mobile, compared to the remaining about 140 which 'just
worked' on a mobile.  But 

Re: pop art

[David Cantrell]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 09:53:49AM +0100, Jim web wrote:

> FWIW and IMHO The problem is that the BBC pages are generated by people
> who have no clue about using simple basic HTML and take for granted what
> browsers. etc, people will use.

This is not the case. They have clue, but they think that supporting the
99.9% of people who use something vaguely modern is more important than
catering for people who deliberately crippled their own experience.

If I were to choose to use something completely bonkers that no-one else
has even heard of this century then I would expect it to not work very
well.  This is why I don't whine when NetPositive on my BeBox makes
stuff look like crap.

-- 
David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig

Planckton: n, the smallest possible living thing

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Re: pop art

[Jim web]

In article 55dc5b76.90...@soulman1949.com, Alan Milewczyk
a...@soulman1949.com wrote:
 On 24/08/2015 09:53, Jim web wrote:
 
  Similarly I found some time ago that there are at least *two* versions
  of the iplayer's schedules day-page listings. One of which only goes
  back a week, while the other covers the full month.
 
 I've not seen the full month version - could you post a sample URL
 please?

I suspect you have, but I've not explained clearly!

Apologies as I had to copy across the following URL  via pen and paper, so
may have made an error..

http://bbc.co.uk/radio3/programmes/schedules/fm/yesterday

gives me a page in FF with a horizontal row of clickable icons. Provided
the browser window is wide enough yesterday is at the center and there
are icons for the next and previous week and a day. i.e. at present the
center is Monday 25th, and the left and right hand icons are last Monday
and next Monday.

If I click on the icon for last Monday the displayed page rearranges to be
centered on last Monday, and I can then click and earlier day's icon to
move to that. For this page the process allows me to find and access
programmes over the last month from today.

This is what I was referring to. It gives access back for a month, but the
span shown at any time is less wide - it only covers +/- week plus a day at
any display center.

I suspect you do know the pages I was referring to but may have thought I
meant the entire month of programming was displayed on a single page.
However that wasn't what I had in mind, so apologies if what I wrote wasn't
clear.

The other version I referred to had a different URL format. However I last
tried it many month ago, and haven't yet been able to remember it! I think
I do have it noted somewhere, but not yet found it. It became irrelevant
once the above one was working. I can't now even recall exactly when I last
checked the old, limited, version. Been looking today, but no success. The
page it gave looked very much like the one delivered above, but the
horizontal set of icons only went back a week, and clicking on the one a
week ago didn't change the page to push back the scope.

FWIW I suspect the older format was a hang-over from the days when the
iplayer was limited to a week back. But it was left in place.


 ... But, having said that, www.bbc.co.uk
 is an amazing site for the sheer diversity of content - it's been my
 home page for ages.

I've written my own home page. The iplayer addresses and top level BBC
pages are some of the main links. :-)

Jim

-- 
Electronics  http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio  http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc  http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html


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Re: pop art

[Jim web]

OT alert as previous. :-)

In article
pheaihcmjkhmhmofbpogaekickaa.c.e.macfarl...@macfh.co.uk, C E
Macfarlane c.e.macfarl...@macfh.co.uk wrote:
 See below for further OT discussion, otherwise please ignore ...


 What is needed in web-design is KIS (Keep It Simple), not a desire to
 show off that you can use complex techniques that only modern browsers
 can handle.  

 TBF, the BBC is such a vast organisation that there can be no question
 of designing the entire layout of individual pages by hand, as Jim and I
 can do on our sites, they have to use some sort of Content Management
 System (CMS), and it may be that many of the first type of problem
 originate in that. However, there is no such excuse for the second
 problem.

Accepted. I'd add that the BBC website is actually amazing overall for it
sheer scope and usefulness. Given that along with its sheer size I can
understand why the problems arise. 

I also realise that many of the limitations for RO/NetSurf are down to them
not currently supporting widely-used web methods, etc. In some cases plain
old HTML alone won't do something. But KIS should mean the simplest and
most widely methods for a given task are the ones used unless there is a
strong reason to the contrary. A classic here is the black text on black
background because the page code sets both those to black, then adds CSS
to change them... leaving browsers without CSS to display the inside of a
coal bunker. Then there is using JavaScript for navigation *instead* of
plain anchor links - which shafts browsers not using JavaScript... and so
on.

Overall, though I think the BBC do pretty well. However the history this
area was why I've personally behaved as I mentioned earlier. I still prefer
RO and its programs for many types of work, but it makes sense to switch to
Linux/FF for the BBC and similar websites.



  Similarly I found some time ago that there are at least *two*
  versions of the iplayer's schedules day-page listings. One of
  which only goes back a week, while the other covers the full month.

 I would have thought that both would be useful.

I'm not sure what the one-week version offers that I can't see from the
longer version.

Note here that by default the same width of FF window/page shows the same
span of days and which items are available 'on demand' *provided* that you
don't take the 'one week into the past' version back beyond a week from
today. So the only difference functionally is that the 'one week' version
won't let you see or access more than a week ago. 

FWIW I was quite confused when I first encountered this as the two versions
look and behave very similarly other than this limitation. I guess it is a
hangover from when the on demand was limited similarly, and no-one had
removed the engine generating the older pages.

I'm now curious so I may try checking again. Maybe they've now removed the
old version.

Jim

-- 
Electronics  http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio  http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc  http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html


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Re: pop art

[Alan Milewczyk]

Hi Jim

On 25/08/2015 18:22, Jim web wrote:

In article 55dc5b76.90...@soulman1949.com, Alan Milewczyk
a...@soulman1949.com wrote:

On 24/08/2015 09:53, Jim web wrote:

Similarly I found some time ago that there are at least *two* versions
of the iplayer's schedules day-page listings. One of which only goes
back a week, while the other covers the full month.


I've not seen the full month version - could you post a sample URL
please?

I suspect you have, but I've not explained clearly!

Apologies as I had to copy across the following URL  via pen and paper, so
may have made an error..

http://bbc.co.uk/radio3/programmes/schedules/fm/yesterday

gives me a page in FF with a horizontal row of clickable icons. Provided
the browser window is wide enough yesterday is at the center and there
are icons for the next and previous week and a day. i.e. at present the
center is Monday 25th, and the left and right hand icons are last Monday
and next Monday.


Ah thanks, I'd totally forgotten about those schedule pages as I've been 
concentrating on the BBC iPlayer schedule pages, which, as you say are 
are limited. There are, of course, similar pages for TV programmes, 
e.g., 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/programmes/schedules/north_west//mm/dd 
form. Interestingly, both radio and TV are not limited to just the past 
month's history, I've clicked back many months a week at a time, 
although that's of no practical use for iPlayer purposes where a month's 
programmes is the maximum available to us!




If I click on the icon for last Monday the displayed page rearranges to be
centered on last Monday, and I can then click and earlier day's icon to
move to that. For this page the process allows me to find and access
programmes over the last month from today.

This is what I was referring to. It gives access back for a month, but the
span shown at any time is less wide - it only covers +/- week plus a day at
any display center.

I suspect you do know the pages I was referring to but may have thought I
meant the entire month of programming was displayed on a single page.
However that wasn't what I had in mind, so apologies if what I wrote wasn't
clear.


No apology needed, I assumed it was a week to view.



The other version I referred to had a different URL format. However I last
tried it many month ago, and haven't yet been able to remember it! I think
I do have it noted somewhere, but not yet found it. It became irrelevant
once the above one was working. I can't now even recall exactly when I last
checked the old, limited, version. Been looking today, but no success. The
page it gave looked very much like the one delivered above, but the
horizontal set of icons only went back a week, and clicking on the one a
week ago didn't change the page to push back the scope.

FWIW I suspect the older format was a hang-over from the days when the
iplayer was limited to a week back. But it was left in place.



No probs.


... But, having said that, www.bbc.co.uk
is an amazing site for the sheer diversity of content - it's been my
home page for ages.

I've written my own home page. The iplayer addresses and top level BBC
pages are some of the main links. :-)

Jim


A good idea! I must get a round tuit myself! ;-)

Incidentally, a few months back I spent a very interesting few days 
going through your web-site, a fascinating read for sure. I graduated in 
Electronic Engineering in 1970 and subscribed to many electronics and 
hi-fi mags particularly in the 60s and 70s! I've forgotten much of the 
design theory as I've not been involved at the nuts and bolts level for 
many many years, my last involvement being the Linley Hood amplifier in 
the mid 70s! Although the electronics world had largely moved to 
transistors by the time I was at Uni 1967-70, I always felt more at home 
with valves! ;-)


Back on topic, I must admit I've felt irritated that the BBC's iPlayer 
pages only let you go back a week when a month's worth of programming is 
available. So, many thanks for reminding me of the ordinary schedule pages!


Regards


Alan



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RE: pop art

[C E Macfarlane]

Still OT below ...

www.macfh.co.uk/CEMH.html

  I've written my own home page. The iplayer addresses and
 top level BBC
  pages are some of the main links. :-)
 
  Jim

 A good idea! I must get a round tuit myself! ;-)

I've produced a template for one as linked below.  You can copy it to your
HD and edit as desired  -  change the RSS links to suit your region, etc, as
well as adding your own links:
http://www.macfh.co.uk/JavaJive/ProgScriptWeb/HomeRSS.html


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Re: pop art

[Alan Milewczyk]

On 24/08/2015 09:53, Jim web wrote:


Similarly I found some time ago that there are at least *two* versions of
the iplayer's schedules day-page listings. One of which only goes back a
week, while the other covers the full month.


I've not seen the full month version - could you post a sample URL please?

Rant over. Apologies to anyone irritated by the irrelevance or views. :-)

Jim



None needed Jim, very interesting discussion and totally agree with the 
points you raise about KIS! There's a tendency for those in the media to 
go for the flashy bells and whistles, assuming that everyone has state 
of the art equipment to view their efforts. I recall about 10-12 years 
ago ITV revamping their website - the problem was in those days most 
people were still on dial-up and their website assumed state of the art 
gear and fast internet connections, the result being many grossly 
unhappy users. I was always taught to put myself in the shoes of the 
customer, something they seemed to forget! Someone mentioned CMS and 
having worked for a local authority I can confirm that these are a 
staple of most large organisations. But, having said that, www.bbc.co.uk 
is an amazing site for the sheer diversity of content - it's been my 
home page for ages.


Regards


Alan

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Re: pop art

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Jim,

 The bbc.co.uk /popart URL took me to a /programmes/p02yt4dz page.

To save those playing along at home to have to manually do it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02yt4dz

 But others have different articles/. formats with lng 'random'
 alphanumeric sequences.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5pN6fKVhx1wYhVXtkjWwPFS/pop-art-season
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/SWCNr4H7s764wwpR7yQxTf/andy-warhol-louis-xiv-sun-kings

Are they not pages listing programmes and their PIDs?

Cheers, Ralph.

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