Freedomain Radio

Hey all! I have been working on a redesign of the site (as I would like to see it) and wanted to see what you all thought about it. Maybe we could use it if people like it and the big whigs up there in FDR management are up for it.

The site has a few bugs still, some pages aren't finished and that sort of thing, but you should get a good idea of what it will look like anyway. The audio player for example is not supported in many browsers (I designed it in Chrome). 

It's currently here:

http://kevinbeal.com/fdr/

So yea, let me know if it's the bag you're into and what kinds of things you would add or do differently. 

Very nice. Can you explain a bit about the improvements the new design provides that the current design does not?

I like the concise layout and having the latest podcast displayed!

PhilipJ:

Very nice. Can you explain a bit about the improvements the new design provides that the current design does not?

I like the concise layout and having the latest podcast displayed!

There is nothing wrong with the current design. To be clear, I actually like it a lot. The slider on the homepage is awesome and gets the essence of the show across really well. 

I like my design partly because it's my own design, but also I think that this design will make it easier to find content and be all in one place. I think that it possibly will also be easier for other people in the FDR community who have some web design and development experience to build on top of. (I think that ASP and .NET are kind of icky personally). Preferably I would also like to incorporate a new forum into this design so that it's consistent and there are no iframes or leaving the site entirely to post in the forums. 

I think visually it's amazing. Looks wonderful.

One thing I don't like (which used to be a problem on this site as well) is the window-within-window of the forum section. That got a lot of complaints during an earlier incarnation of this site, for good reason I think. But aesthetically speaking, I think there are a lot of great things in your design.

kremlin:

One thing I don't like (which used to be a problem on this site as well) is the window-within-window of the forum section. That got a lot of complaints during an earlier incarnation of this site, for good reason I think.

I completely agree. If I could have gotten access to the database the forum runs off of, I might have included a new design of the forum. There are a lot of things about how the forums work now that would have to be done completely differently if it were to be incorporated into my design, such as generating database data in PHP rather than ASP (if I'm correct that it is written in ASP). I myself am not the greatest PHP programmer in the world and would need help to redesign the forum (getting into the structure of the site itself rather than in an iframe or in full screen). 

An example of something I think would be easy enough and useful would be to encourage people to tag youtube videos and podcasts so as to show related podcasts and videos in forum threads. Another idea that I think could be cool is to include the names of the people in the chat currently somewhere in the forums, in case you'd like a quick chat and some kind of marker in a post next to a user's avatar, saying if they are in the chat or not. Or possibly to show people online currently in the forum and invite them into the chat. 

I don't know. There are a lot of things possible if people find it worthwhile.

Happy New Year!

Oh and to be clear, the content in terms of graphics and text is taken from the current design, so I cannot take credit for most of that. 

I'd love to get some more feedback if people are interested.

 Anything that is lean and fast is better.  Fancy features, scripting, and stuff makes websites slow.  It is a bummer when websites just assume you have a certain browser, monitor resolution, or internet speed.  It would be especially cool to have an ftp section of the site.  It seems easier to use mget command in ftp instead of mouse clicking over and over to get an assortment of files.

RestoringGuy:

 Anything that is lean and fast is better.  Fancy features, scripting, and stuff makes websites slow.  It is a bummer when websites just assume you have a certain browser, monitor resolution, or internet speed.  It would be especially cool to have an ftp section of the site.  It seems easier to use mget command in ftp instead of mouse clicking over and over to get an assortment of files.

Well, web designers (if they're good) don't assume any of that stuff. They base it on their audience. It's possible to make sites that are responsive to all browser window sizes, but this is a big investment in time and energy for not much payoff. Also scripting doesn't necessarily make load times that much slower. Repetitive and poorly written scripts can do this (especially in javascript or other locally run scripts). The amount of scripting that goes into google's search algorithms is MUCH bigger than nearly every other site out there and yet it runs extremely quickly, and much of that in javascript nonetheless.

Mostly I think what slows down websites is the number of http requests required to load the page such as stylesheets, external scripts, images etc.

I'm not sure what purpose an FTP section of the site would serve. As far as I know the only FTP-ing that goes on is for avatars. And as you can see I haven't even used it. Is there something I'm missing?

koney:

Well, web designers (if they're good) don't assume any of that stuff. They base it on their audience. It's possible to make sites that are responsive to all browser window sizes, but this is a big investment in time and energy for not much payoff. Also scripting doesn't necessarily make load times that much slower. Repetitive and poorly written scripts can do this (especially in javascript or other locally run scripts). The amount of scripting that goes into google's search algorithms is MUCH bigger than nearly every other site out there and yet it runs extremely quickly, and much of that in javascript nonetheless.

Mostly I think what slows down websites is the number of http requests required to load the page such as stylesheets, external scripts, images etc.

As analogy, if it works on IE 3 in Win 95 with dialup, it will basically work even better on everything else.   It's not a big investment if it works on minimal platform..  Stuff written for bleeding edge will fail more often than something with minimal requirement.  That's just basic tech Murphy's law, right?   I am not against the new features, just that they should not be mandated to do stuff.  I can't use them.  I turn off google's script.  It's of no use when vanilla HTML processing does a faster job.  Last thing I need is a screen that can't keep up with my typing speed.

koney:

I'm not sure what purpose an FTP section of the site would serve. As far as I know the only FTP-ing that goes on is for avatars. And as you can see I haven't even used it. Is there something I'm missing?

I'm talking about podcasts, not HTML.  Maybe there is a better way, you tell me.  I just want to get say three dozen podcasts sequentially (not load them all in parallel!), and I don't want to wait to click them one-by-one as they each finish every 8 minutes.  It's a waste of time.  FTP's mget would make it simple and unattended.  I can use Windows or Linux, but I want to use something easy and preferably built-in and scriptable.

RestoringGuy:

As analogy, if it works on IE 3 in Win 95 with dialup, it will basically work even better on everything else.   It's not a big investment if it works on minimal platform..  Stuff written for bleeding edge will fail more often than something with minimal requirement. 

I don't think that's actually true. You will succeed in making fewer cross browser errors in your design if you start with say IE6 than in Chrome, but not by all that much. Many ways structuring of pages is done in older browsers have been deprecated in newer ones. In other words, newer browsers are backwards compatible only to a point. And maybe only 6 percent of visitors use IE6 and thus the days of work that go into making their viewing experience the same as in newer browsers is not all that valuable when in newer browsers the amount of time spent on say rounded corners (for example) goes down to seconds from like an hour (if you know what you are doing). 

I don't actually know what browsers people use to visit FDR and maybe half of visitors use IE6 and thus my design would have to change. I doubt this is the case since Stef's audience is mostly tech savvy. And I don't have any experience designing for IE6 so development time goes up significantly (if I'm designing it).

RestoringGuy:

That's just basic tech Murphy's law, right?

I believe murhpy's law states that computers get twice as fast and twice as affordable every year. I'm not sure what this has to do with designing for older browsers. If anything is says the opposite.

RestoringGuy:

I am not against the new features, just that they should not be mandated to do stuff.  I can't use them.  I turn off google's script.  It's of no use when vanilla HTML processing does a faster job.  Last thing I need is a screen that can't keep up with my typing speed.

The autocomplete feature is something I like a lot that google has done. Google has received a lot of positive feedback for that feature and is a net positive in their eyes. And the page loads (as far as I know) don't slow down your experience even if you don't like any of the results up to the last. I actually think that this technology is amazing, and have a miniature scale not-as-dynamic version running on the podcasts page of the design I made. 

RestoringGuy:

I'm talking about podcasts, not HTML.  Maybe there is a better way, you tell me.  I just want to get say three dozen podcasts sequentially (not load them all in parallel!), and I don't want to wait to click them one-by-one as they each finish every 8 minutes. 

Well, that is something I would also like. I believe that this can be done relatively easily using javascript and a media player plugin like jPlayer. I'm actually looking into this and haven't found anything yet, but am sure it's out there. If anyone knows how this is possible using javascript and ajax requests I'd be really appreciative. I have the podcasts durations already set in the database and suppose I could use a settimeout() kind of deal if there are no other options. 

koney:

[I don't think that's actually true. You will succeed in making fewer cross browser errors in your design if you start with say IE6 than in Chrome, but not by all that much. Many ways structuring of pages is done in older browsers have been deprecated in newer ones. In other words, newer browsers are backwards compatible only to a point. And maybe only 6 percent of visitors use IE6 and thus the days of work that go into making their viewing experience the same as in newer browsers is not all that valuable when in newer browsers the amount of time spent on say rounded corners (for example) goes down to seconds from like an hour (if you know what you are doing). 

I don't actually know what browsers people use to visit FDR and maybe half of visitors use IE6 and thus my design would have to change. I doubt this is the case since Stef's audience is mostly tech savvy. And I don't have any experience designing for IE6 so development time goes up significantly (if I'm designing it).

That's the trend, but it sucks.  It's like deliberately making roads incompatible so new cars will sell better.  I've been programming for a long time, including web, and have hoped such disregard for tech continuity was a thing left in the 80's.  I see no reason to follow that trend, but I understand your point.

koney:

I believe murhpy's law states that computers get twice as fast and twice as affordable every year. I'm not sure what this has to do with designing for older browsers. If anything is says the opposite.

That's Moore's Law you're talking about.  Murphy's law states if things can go wrong, they will.  It was easier to see everything before, but crap like Windows 7 hides a lot and even places phantom system directories that emulate real ones.  Everything has become dishonest, too complex to understand in total, and therefore more unreliable.

koney:

The autocomplete feature is something I like a lot that google has done. Google has received a lot of positive feedback for that feature and is a net positive in their eyes. And the page loads (as far as I know) don't slow down your experience even if you don't like any of the results up to the last. I actually think that this technology is amazing, and have a miniature scale not-as-dynamic version running on the podcasts page of the design I made. 

Hunt and peck typing makes it useful.  On google, the flicker is bad.  The SOPA-world cookie/keystroke tracking is bad.   The browser stealing focus is bad.  And it makes scripting tougher.  What security holes and patches will we need someday to fix the problems just to gain some gimmicks?  It's not worth it to me.  I just want to type a command in totality, boolean operators and all, and I think intermediate search is bandwidth and cycle waste.  Like the sniffing dog in XP, autosearch is a cool trick I guess, but is it objectively proven to be useful?

koney:

Well, that is something I would also like. I believe that this can be done relatively easily using javascript and a media player plugin like jPlayer. I'm actually looking into this and haven't found anything yet, but am sure it's out there. If anyone knows how this is possible using javascript and ajax requests I'd be really appreciative. I have the podcasts durations already set in the database and suppose I could use a settimeout() kind of deal if there are no other options. 

Thanks for the ideas.  I am just saving the mp3 file to sd card or cd rom for use in my car.  Anything with media player is probably overkill, I admit I know little about scripting such a thing to dump directly to external media.  Media player also litters the PC with extra files, playlists, weird temp files and junk.  I just need raw MP3 files   A script I can run and walk away would be ideal.  On the other hand, it would be cool to just have every mp3 saved to cd-rom.  I would pay somebody to burn and mail them to me.  I just can't stand click click click and the mandatory delay.  I haven't heard a podcast in weeks, and missed a lot of them, just because of the hassle.

RestoringGuy:

That's the trend, but it sucks.  It's like deliberately making roads incompatible so new cars will sell better.  I've been programming for a long time, including web, and have hoped such disregard for tech continuity was a thing left in the 80's.  I see no reason to follow that trend, but I understand your point.

I have not been programming nearly as long as you it sounds like, but I see a lot of benefits to this approach toward displaying web pages. There is more continuity for developers and most users. The only reason there are as many people using older browsers like IE6 is because in third world countries people can't legally get newer operating systems necessary for using modern browsers. Older browsers are considered a huge pain in the ass by most developers because they are not in continuity with modern browsers (which they and most others use). I believe you are thinking backwards when it comes to developing websites. 

RestoringGuy:

That's Moore's Law you're talking about.  Murphy's law states if things can go wrong, they will.  It was easier to see everything before, but crap like Windows 7 hides a lot and even places phantom system directories that emulate real ones.  Everything has become dishonest, too complex to understand in total, and therefore more unreliable.

lol, yea, I thought you were referring to Moore's law. What I would say though about things going wrong is that this has always always been the case in every project I've ever worked on. I know there are going to be things that go wrong so I just make it as enjoyable as possible by developing in a way that works in the way that I surf the net and then go back and fix cross browser issues, which aren't that big a deal unless it's for old IE browsers. 

RestoringGuy:

Hunt and peck typing makes it useful.  On google, the flicker is bad.  The SOPA-world cookie/keystroke tracking is bad.   The browser stealing focus is bad.  And it makes scripting tougher.  What security holes and patches will we need someday to fix the problems just to gain some gimmicks?  It's not worth it to me.  I just want to type a command in totality, boolean operators and all, and I think intermediate search is bandwidth and cycle waste.  Like the sniffing dog in XP, autosearch is a cool trick I guess, but is it objectively proven to be useful? 

Focus as the browser event or focus as in it's distracting? If you are a fast typist as you suggest then I don't see how you'd have any issue with that because it would be over with in less than a second. And I don't even know how scripting is possible in their search field. And security holes? I have no idea what you are talking about. Protecting from things like sql injections is really easy, and I don't know that there is any other kind of security issue possible for text inputs. 

Objectively useful? I'm not convinced that it matters either way. Anecdotally I can tell you it's been helpful for me, but what really matters is that people want it and are getting it, right?

I have to say Koney, I really like your design.. The simple way of accessing the raw ingredients of the site is very good.. My only criticism would be that I really like the front end of the current site, as it gives a real feel for what Stef is about.. It maybe resource intensive for some folk, but it's great marketing I feel.. Perhaps keep the current front end and replace the back end with yours or something siimilar.

But I have to say, nice job all the same.

koney:

There is more continuity for developers and most users. The only reason there are as many people using older browsers like IE6 is because in third world countries people can't legally get newer operating systems necessary for using modern browsers. Older browsers are considered a huge pain in the ass by most developers because they are not in continuity with modern browsers (which they and most others use). I believe you are thinking backwards when it comes to developing websites. 

No browser maker wants to be the first to drop depreciated methods.  The more we keep those methods, the less likely they will become unsupported. 

koney:

Focus as the browser event or focus as in it's distracting? If you are a fast typist as you suggest then I don't see how you'd have any issue with that because it would be over with in less than a second. And I don't even know how scripting is possible in their search field. And security holes? I have no idea what you are talking about. Protecting from things like sql injections is really easy, and I don't know that there is any other kind of security issue possible for text inputs. 

Objectively useful? I'm not convinced that it matters either way. Anecdotally I can tell you it's been helpful for me, but what really matters is that people want it and are getting it, right?

It's the events that cause half the keystrokes to wind up in the wrong field because the cursor jumps to a place often at the script's direction.  It's not SQL injection, but the poor design of the scripting engine itself that leaves the PC open to exploits.    I don't think it's right just to say people want it.  People want government too. 

I think that's secondary and often they "want" it because they've been conditioned that they now must have it and make the most of it.  If the browsers and operating systems were built with encryption and total exposure and control to the user of cookies and scripting action, evil people would have nothing to take over.  The traffic on the Internet (and the scripts embedded within that traffic) is an open book to the government.  if that scripting is gone or at least encrypted and isolated in airtight space within the browser, your machine is not a slave.  SOPA and all the keystroke logging the government does is proof we're moving in the wrong direction.  People wanting it is just a mistake.

On a similar note, maybe you can switch to https?   Just wondering.