Changes to our blogs
Post categories: BBC News website
| 09:28 UK time, Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Since we at the BBC started blogging in earnest in 2005, we have seen some incredible growth. Now tens of millions of our blog pages are being read every month, and our hope in BBC News is that they add context and expert analysis to the big stories.
When we started blogging it felt important that our blogs should follow the style of other blogs at the time, and because we used a popular blogging program, that was easy to achieve. Since then styles have matured a bit, and this week the design for our pages is also changing.
The main thing you'll notice is that the columns are wider than before, meaning the width of the page now matches that of the main BBC News website.
The page headers are now also the same, meaning it's easier to find other content from across the BBC. We hope that one effect of these changes is to make it obvious that our blogs are now a core part of what the BBC website offers. Do let us know what you think about the new designs.
Incidentally, while talking about blogs, the deputy director of BBC News, Stephen Mitchell, discussed the proper role of blogging in the BBC with media commentator Stephen Glover on this week's Newswatch, which you can watch here.
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Update [27 March]: Thanks very much everyone for your thoughts on the changes. There are a few answers I can give.
1 - Isn't this just change for change's sake?
I don't think so. The entire BBC website has been changing over the past 12 to 18 months for a number of good reasons, and we think it's important that the design of BBC blogs is consistent with the design of the rest of BBC Online. Blogs are not a sideshow, they are now integral to a lot of what we are doing in News, and it's right that the design should reflect that.
2 - Aren't the columns too wide?
Given the extra available space, we had a choice to make between a two-column layout and a three-column layout. We did some simple testing of three-column layouts and found a generally negative reaction - it seemed that people found the layout cluttered and harder to use. We do try to consider carefully these changes before we make them, but we hear what some of you have said about them being hard to read.
3 - Why did you move the comment link?
Research told us that many blog readers were keen to see an indication of popularity at the top of each blog post, to help them decide if the blog entry was likely to be worth reading. We incorporated this feedback into our designs. But given what you've told us, and seeing how the redesign works in practice, we are going to investigate incorporating a second link at the end of each entry, meaning you could click through to comments after you've read the entry.
4 - Why don't you paginate long lists of comments?
If we receive more than 500 comments on a post, we do start to paginate them then. Until that point, we believe that the majority of people would prefer to scroll though a list of comments, rather than click repeatedly to a new page.
5 - Why have you moved the categories, calendar, etc, to the bottom of the page?
Very few people delve into the archive of a blog on a regular basis. We can tell this from the usage data we collect all the time. At the same time, it's important to many of our bloggers that they should be able to offer extra functionality - headlines from the News website, Twitter updates, etc. So we have separated our own navigation from the third-party content, which allows us to make more effective use of the right hand side. We did tests with users of the blogs to ask them if they could find the archives when they were at the bottom, and found that they could.
6 - Why can't I use all characters when leaving my comment?
This is obviously a problem and we are working to sort it out. It's worth saying that there is a number of improvements that we wish to make to the comment system across the BBC, and we're on to it.
7 - Why are blogs pre-moderated?
We are always reviewing how moderation works in the BBC, but at the moment we have no plans to move away from pre-moderation for the majority of News blogs. For information, our aim is that the moderators should check all comments within an hour of receipt, although this can vary considerably depending on traffic. There have been no changes to moderation as part of the redesign.
8. What about the other blogs which have not yet been widened?
Some blogs - Blether with Brian, for instance, and the Magazine Monitor - have not yet been widened. Our plan is for this to happen in the next few weeks.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~21~RS~)
Comments
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WIDER COLUMNS !!!! ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL !!!!
How on earth are we meant to 'speed-read' on a screen, with each line read in one 'glance', when the columns are so wide.
THIS IS A BAD BAD BAD MOVE !!! The narrow columns approach has been used by the BBC and The Guardian for donkey's years, and now the usability baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.
For heaven's sake - will we soon be seeing newspapers getting rid of their 6/7/8 columns and just have two wide columns of text ??
Ridiculous and I can confidently predict it will only be a matter of weeks before you succumb to public pressure to make the columns narrower.
AWFUL AWFUL MISTAKE !!
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Why have you moved the comment option to the top, surely most people will want to read the blog first, so what have they got to do now is either read the blog and then scroll back to the top and then select the "Comment" option or select the comment link on accessing the page and then scroll all over the place to first read and then comment, sorry but this is totally daft (and very unfriendly to those who have accessibility issues I suspect!), again the BBC goes for style over function.
The "Preview" option is welcome though. It would be nice if you could offer a proper threaded forum and sort out the problematic moderation times next.
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Further to my comment @ #2
I can actually see some people making comments to the wrong blog as things are, they expect the comment option to be at the bottom of the blog, which might mean they follow the link to comments on the previous blog!
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"The main thing you'll notice is that the columns are wider than before, meaning the width of the page now matches that of the main BBC News website."
This is disingenous tripe !! Whereas the 'news' articles have around 10 words per line, the new 'improved' [sic] blogs have nearer 20 ! How can this be considered 'matching' the 'news' pages to the 'blog' pages ?
Ridiculous !
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There will always be dinosaurs who object to change on principle - why not give it a go first, and then comment.
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#4
"This is disingenous tripe !!"
Indeed, the html box that that contains the news story is 468 pixels wide, the box that contains the blog text is around 606 pixels wide! I suspect that what Mr Wilson actually meant by his 'spin' was that the page now matches the style of the main BBC site...
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#5
"There will always be dinosaurs who object to change on principle - why not give it a go first, and then comment."
Because change is always bad when it's made for the wrong reasons, it's not being dinosaurs to spot such problems as 'userbility' and accessibility, none of the comments from myself or "lordBeddGelert" have been of the 'I don't like the new look because I liked to old look' sort, they have pointed out valid probalems and are thus far from being dinosaurs in the room comments.
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Giles,
The main column = too wide. Really, it is.
The point about the number of words on each line is a very important one. As it stands, it's now a fair bit more difficult to go from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. Reading is harder work. I'm sure you can see it yourself.
I can appreciate the design constraints, but it seems to me that this whole pan-BBC grid layout is being enforced a bit too rigidly (the Weather site has the opposite problem - the main column there is too narrow because they have that left navigation column, so content in the middle column is now squashed). Do you have to stick to it so rigidly for these blogs? If not, a couple of suggestions:
1) Make the right hand column narrower, and introduce a further column to the left hand side - containing the "other news blogs" links. (Then move "More from this blog" up into the right column.
2) Failing that, just try and close the width up a bit with some design solution or other, either a vertical keyline between the existing two columns (with padding either side of the line) - or by having some kind of 20-30 pixel bar running down the left hand side, making the content start further inward and the main column narrower as a result.
(Your branding bods might shriek in horror but at least you'd have a more usable website.)
The other point - about the Comments link being at the top on the main blog homepage is another valid complaint - I'm surprised you didn't identify a problem there before going live.
Finally - not that this should be at the top of your list, but has this been tested in Opera Mac? Text is rendering oddly, and the preview text has huge vertical gaps between paragraphs.
Oh, yes, a Preview button.. at last! And nicely implemented. Now there's an improvement. :)
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I'm afraid I too am not a fan. While everything looks much nicer the more popular blogs are unusably slow when they have hundreds of comments. Perhaps some form of pagination would help out us poor users with computers more than 6 months old?
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When I first saw this format when reading Jonathan Overend's tennis blog, I thought that the page's CSS stylesheet had gone missing.
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Yay, horizontal scrollbars, thanks BBC!
*writes stylish script*
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I hope that Giles Wilson will follow the example of his fellow editor Steve Herrmann and reply to at least some of the feedback?
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Yes, you need a left-hand menu - as you have on every other BBC web page.
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In the words of another great blog: FAIL.
Too wide, too little content per line, too much white space, comments button in the wrong place.
Revert, retry, reboot.
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But 'looking on the bright side of life'... At least that fantastic blog by Betsan Powys, and the PM blog haven't been altered..yet...
Giles, I hope you have read 'The Wisdom of Crowds' by James Sumfinkoruvver..
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Call me weird but I can read the text perfectly fine, it didn't strike me as being too wide when I first opened the page. There are many example where text columns are wider, such as Wikipedia, and the text there is equally as readable. I fail to see why the width of the text columns of all things is so notable?
And with regards to #4, he said the page is wider and matches the news pages; he did not say the width of the columns matches those on the news pages.
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Apart from the comments already made there are a few things to this design that make it look, well, a bit strange.
I know the BBC loves white space in its sites now, but do we really need that huge header for each article? I'm not bothered either way about photos, but some thought about how to put all the elements into the box effectively would have been nice. And I would have thought the author might have got top billing, rather than the tag. And you could lose some of the space around the boxes on the right.
Second, every blog seems to get chopped off after three articles - not a problem for a realtively inactive blog but for one like Robert Peston's, with daily article (or more!) this really doesn't let the content flow.
Third, the 'more from this blog' stuff at the bottom is really a monster. If you *really* think they're useful, some of these can really be put up on the right hand side (categories, authors) where you currently have the 'BBC in the news' box. More articles in the main blog, please, less clicking through 'helpful' BBC links. Even 'last 10 posts' rather than 'topical posts' (you already have categories, one or the other please). I come here to read blogs, not click on links.
Finally, it's not actually that easy to find where you can go to add a comment, this really needs to be improved.
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Giles:
I am not happy with the new format of the blogs! Since it is so little space available to read comments without the extra screening of information...
~Dennis Junior~
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Giles:
Just a common question: About the font and type setting of the blog, some persons are hard-sighted in the vision department...
~Dennis Junior~
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THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE OUTRAGE!!!!
HOW DARE YOU!
How am I expected to read lines with more than TEN words on them?
I get to the eleventh or twelfth word and suddenly it all turns to mush and I end up forgetting what it was I was going to complain about.
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I like the changes. The Preview option is especially useful. I would however note that the User Profile displays posts in blocks of 10, whilst the navigation (Newer, Older) jumps +25/-25 posts at a time.
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#16
"Call me weird but I can read the text perfectly fine..."
No one has said that the text is unreadable, just that it takes more effort, the eye is having to scan a lot further to read the same content as before! Also now that the page is wider (as you say) to match the 'BBC house style' people have to devote far more screen space to the BBC pages if they are multi-tasking, and (as with #11) those who for what ever reason are not using a minimum 1024x768 screen resolution now get horizontal scroll bars for basically the same content as before! Whilst either of those problems might well be acceptable for many of the BBC web pages it's not for some (such as blogs and many of the news pages), where by there very nature the page(s) get left open and glanced at - quite possibly - through out the day.
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Another minor observation: the blockquote tag no longer identifies the text being quoted (e.g. an indent).
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Its ok.. I like the changes.
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I don't much like the new style, but the larger sizing is perhaps easier to read.
What's infuriating is that after nearly a year of using the Movable Type software, and despite numerous complaints on the blog threads asking for the BBC techies to fix it, there is still no easy way of putting displaying accented characters - needed in not a few ENGLISH words - and currency symbols other than $ - you'd think a BBC blog would let you use the symbol for the GBP! Even emails don't get more than a "we'll look at it sometime" response.
It's also a pity we've lost the use of the <blockquote> tag - very useful in some circumstances if not overdone.
A final point is that the very useful preview gives extra white space compared to the "actual" post and annoyingly shows accented characters and currency symbols correctly in a way that the "actual" post will not!
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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Apologies if this repeats my #25, but there seemed to have been a technical glitch and I suspect my post was truncated.
I don't much like the new style, but the larger sizing is perhaps easier to read.
What's infuriating is that after nearly a year of using the Movable Type software, and despite numerous complaints on the blog threads asking for the BBC techies to fix it, there is still no easy way of putting displaying accented characters - needed in not a few ENGLISH words - and currency symbols other than $ - you'd think a BBC blog would let you use the symbol for the GBP! Even emails don't get more than a "we'll look at it sometime" response.
It's also a pity we've lost the use of the <blockquote> tag - very useful in some circumstances if not overdone.
A final point is that the very useful preview gives extra white space compared to the "actual" post and annoyingly shows accented characters and currency symbols correctly in a way that the "actual" post will not!
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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Bimby - you are missing the point, possibly deliberately...
If you put your fingers, very gently, over your eyelids while reading, you will soon realise how much work your eyes are doing to scan over a long line. But with ten words or fewer, you can probably 'grab' all the words in one glance. In fact, if you look in the middle of the line of the column of a newspaper, you can probably read the whole article very quickly by ONLY moving your eyes DOWNWARDS without needing to scan right and left at all.
In this way you can easily read at up to 600 words per minute - which is essential for getting through the 'short and snappy' nature of blogs and newspapers.
Someone mentioned wikipedia - well their format is dreadful, but at least you can make the screen smaller and scrunch their text into narrow columns.
So 'why make life complicated' by dispensing with 'narrow columns' - they've worked on the Guardian, Times and Telegraph for years -
"If it ain't broke.."
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25 browndov
Re displaying the £ and accents like á é à ó ú
If you can create a UTF-8 document and display it in Ascii then paste it into the comments box. that will solve your problem. Ive written a quite small encoder program that has enabled me to type this comment.
The pound in UTF-8 is £ and the Yen is Â¥. You can use charmap to produce these. Its more complicated when you get to accents. as at Character 192 you restart at character 128 and use Ã. This UTF-8 system is used by emails and gives the The Bloggers Nick,Robert etc access to more characters like the Euro. Our comment boxes are in Ascii mode.
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To all the complainers about column width:
If you change your "view" (at least in Firefox) you can make the lines shorter (columns narrower) by playing around with zoom and/or "zoom text only" (in drop-down view menu). My firefox 3.0.7 then keeps my preferences, and the new format is very comfortable.
Try "zoom text only" and then check the PM blog for some really nice narrow columns....
The problem with GBP and other unavailable symbols remains and is a right pain in the nethers.
Meanwhile we remain trapped in the playpen with Cbeebies....
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
Slainte!
ed
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Much cleaner, more stylish and despite some of the comments above, I find it much easier to read. Everything has space to 'breath'. Excellent stuff!
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#27
[ re the mention of Wilipedia ]
Also, Wikipedia is not a blog, an important difference, it's mostly a work of reference (or at least that's what it claims to be...) and thus is read in a totally different way to that of replies within blog.
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Re 28: please ignore the how to print £ and ¥ The software blocked one of the characters needed to display my solution. Try switching text encoding on your browser to western European iso 8859-1. (Which also changes those black squares into pound signs and accents). They actually are there. To see what I was trying to say . The pound is £ and the the Yen is ¥. You start each with a Capital A circumflex.
Or just type pounds and accents as usual which can be seen by changing text encoding to Western European Iso 8859-1 or ISO 8859-15(displays the currency character as the Euro) . I think many people are using that method. probably easier as long as you don't refresh to much.
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#29
"If you change your "view" (at least in Firefox) you can make the lines shorter (columns narrower) by playing around with zoom and/or "zoom text only" (in drop-down view menu). My firefox 3.0.7 then keeps my preferences, and the new format is very comfortable."
All that is doing in my version of Firefox (3.0.6) is making the text smaller or larger, the line length stays the same - it's not the number of words per line but the actual line length (the only way of dealing with that would be to alter/disable the BBC's suggested .css file) which is the issue here.
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The columns are too wide. Shrink them by 25-30%.
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Boilerplated (33),
Try "zoom text only" and line length will change, and it's likely you'll lose the horizontal scroll bar as well.
D H Wilkinson (32)
Come again? Please describe how you do circumflexA in a bit more detail.
Test: £ ¥
;-)
ed
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Test:
£ ¥ £ ¥ €
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Test: £££€€€ (copied in from gedit editor)
Test: €€€€££££ (circAEUR...circAGBP typed in)
Test: €€€€££££ (as above, but copied in from Gedit)
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I quite like it but, like all sensible people, I clear my computer of unwanted junk and that includes cookies. Obviously you need to sign in again having done so and there is no link for that on Mark Mardell's blog. (I have not checked them all).
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#35
I don't have a horizontal scroll bar, I also tried both normal zooming and the text-only option (both in and out) but it made no difference to the line length. Anyway, that is not the solution to the issue as not all people will have the option available with their browsers, the easiest way the BBC could sort this is to add content to the left-hand side of the page, perhaps the site-wide menu found on all the news pages.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Test - just tested this in D'weaver with western character set installed. It does not like central European accents but otherwise recognises the html.
æ, ç, Ó, ¾, ©, ®, $, ¢, £, ¥, €.
(It also works fine in the preview)
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Didn't think a change was needed, but you got to justify the amount you spend on your web site somehow (was it some 39 million over budget in 2007 - topping out at 110 million!)..... so a little pointless redesign makes me feel everything is back under control!!!!
It's my BBC.........
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I would suggest that when commenting on a post after 500 the poster be directed to the page they posted from not at the beginning.
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Ed -
May I but in? A circumflex like this -
Â, â
ampersand+hash+194+semicolon and ampersand+hash+226+semicolon
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Ref #40:
Dear BBC Blog contributor,
Thank you for contributing to a BBC Blog. Unfortunately we've had to remove your content below
Your posting appears to be off-topic, in that it does not appear to relate to the subject of this blog. ...
Regards,
The BBC Blog Team
Subject:
Changes to our blogs
Posting:
Test
££££££
àèíóú€
It seems there is a lot of pretty subjective (pun intended) judgement about what it on or off topic. This thread is titled "changes to our blogs", and a number of comments, including mine, concern the new format's rendering of certain characters...
How is a test of these matters off-topic?
D H Wilkinson (28&32),
A link to your wee routine wouldn't go amiss.
Salaam/Shalom/Shanthi/Peace
ed
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The previous one worked well with the column was a little too close to the left rim of the screen. So I complaint.
This move seems a bit more than expected. Function is important, style matters, too. What really worries me is that you can not comment when you like on whichever entries you like, as you could before. What if you have just discovered some odd old entries and want to contribute a word? The situation now is likely to be "this entry is now closed".
One might say old entries are not new anymore. But the nature of blogging - a history recorded through certain eyes - browsing the faded past through the archives and still being able to happily participate are a part of what a common blog can offer. Presumably the problem is that with increasing popularity over time the BBC moderators will have to spend less time on holiday.
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Subject: "Changes to our blogs"
Test: (seeing how the changes (which are the topic of this blog) work in rendering certain characters)
ÃàÃèÃíÃóÃúÀ
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Boilerplated (39),
See this screenshot. set up with view/zoom/zoomtextonly followed by several ctrl++...
The lines do definitely shorten as I zoom in. Maybe you should upgrade to 3.0.7?
Peace to all
ed
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Oh I get it. Html mark up appears to work in the preview function to lull you into a false sense of security then you post and - presto - it doesn't work at all. What a load of rubbish!
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#47
Keep that up long enough and the BBC might actually offer a test blog, accessible to only those logged in (and to stop any little darlings from accessing the grown-ups areas have a different log-in algorithm for the CBeebies and CBBC sites)...!
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Overall, I like the new layout. Most blogs have two columns. Fact. I find the text easy to read. Verdana helps. Sadly, Verdana looks AWFUL when it's large. I *think* the headlines are Verdana? Regardless, they look bad. Especially those at the bottom of the blog index page.
And is there a reason I can't copy text from a post in the blog index part? Is it a Firefox issue? It seems to think I haven't selected any text when I right-click to copy something. Only on the blog index, though. The individual posts are fine.
Again, I like the design, it's clear and easy to read and it is VERY difficult to have too much white space. Somebody mentioned there was too much but I disagree. Plenty of white space is an important attribute.
One last point; Rounded corners are a bit Web 2008 =P
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Threnodio (49),
I think the problem is, as identified by Brownedov and D H Wilkinson, that the "comments entry" subroutine uses a different character set, being built on the dna system with roots going back to the much-missed Douglas Adams...
Douglas, please come back through some wormhole and give us a hand....please!
;-)
ed
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#52 - Ed Iglehart
Ed -
I am getting close to giving up to be honest. I too had a comment removed elsewhere today but, unlike you, did not receive an email. In fact I didn't know you were supposed to. So I figured that they still have an old email address on record, tried to find my profile to update it only to find that there isn't one - well, of course there is somewhere in the sql but not accessible. All you can do is sign in.
I have come to the conclusion that "we used a popular blogging program, that was easy to achieve" (to quote Giles Wilson) and that actually they still are. Probably all they have actually done is put on a new front end by rewriting the style sheet. Yes, the new carriagework looks fine, but beneath it I suspect is the same tired old engine.
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I really admire this new look. It looks wonderful on my HD laptop.
I also enjoyed watching the video debate about blogging. I recently had a University lecture about blogging (as I study journalism myself) and found the points raised very interesting. Well done BBC. A very good quality looking page. Very impressed.
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Ok, I get the fact that people - even at the BBC - have to justify their place in an organisation when downsizing is a real prospect.
But these changes smack of change for change's sake, of someone thinking that a change - ANY change - indicates that he/she is being productive in his/her role.
ALL of the changes are disastrous, and should be reversed without delay.
You're two weeks early for the most appropriate date for this story - April 1st!
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To be honest, when comments are in a moderation queue over 2.5 hours long on a night when there is nothing new from Crick, Robinson, Flanders, Easton, Peston or Mason, whether or not the subroutine can cope with html is the least of their problems. There are enough fair minded people using these blogs for reactive moderation to be used. It works perfect well on the Radio 4 blogs.
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helgatogs opined (#5) that "There will always be dinosaurs who object to change on principle..."
Of course, if the dinosaurs had been able to adapt, the human race would (almost certainly) never have developed...
--
On the principal point at issue, however:
Anyone who has spent any time in management knows that for every change that improves productivity, etc. (the measure of success will vary according to the industry concerned), at least three (and in my experience, it is closer to nine out of ten) - which are just as costly to implement - either make no difference, because the consumer will accept the product offered regardless, or actually impair the quality of the service provision, and have to be reversed at even greater expense.
Has anyone outside of BBC Blog Central had an input to the change?
Why not have parallel production of certain blogs for a time - possibly allowing people to toggle between formats - or even vary the style from day to day, and find out what the BBC's consumers (and, in a very real sense, paymasters) prefer.
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One main problem.
I can't see the "Recent replies" to posts, I'd like to know when BBC staff reply to people's points in blogs.
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displaying £'s
Imagine this is a capital A circumflex with its hat on a hatstand A^ put his hat on and place it in front of the pound or yen sign. which will give you this '£'. The capital A Circumflex(Â) in front of the character works from ascii characters 128-191
in the character set. for 192-255 we put capital A tilde A~ with its hat on(Ã) in front but instead of starting at 192 we start at 128 again. meaning we subtract 64 from the ascii number we want to print.
EG char 255 ascci is á utf is Ã&#(161); {225-64=161}
á é í ó ú
á é à ó ú
£
A lot of you using firefox whis is handy. go to view/character encoding/Western iso 8859-1 and look at this comment again. should make things clearer. Using character encoding to reveal these illegal characters is probably the best method anyway.
The question marks are blocked characters these appear when you use autoformating they produce software specific formatting like currency or smart quotes.
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I'm not in vavor of this so called improvement.
I personally find the current layout more like the feel of a real physical newspaper. I'm comfortable with a seeming A5 sheet printed with narrow print collums, one reason I enjoy following these blogs.
OK it's an improvement in technology and all that cutting edge stuff. But is it nescesary?
How about exercising a little democracy and allow us the choice to use old or new. Then we can decide, and all that exciting technological stuff can be put to some other more imaginative use.
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number 2 is spot on and exactly what I was going to say - placing the comments box at the top totally ruins the 'flow' of the page, very user-unfriendly.
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Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
#28 dhwilkinson
"Re displaying the £ and accents like á é í ó ú"
OK, thanks. The principle is simple enough to comprehend for anyone with coding experience, but despite having written code in Assembler and most other programming languages since 1966, I don't quite follow the "display it in Ascii" bit. MS Front Page, for example lets you switch the page encoding, but then leaves the accented characters unchanged but switches EURs to €€€s and GBPs to £££s.
What software are you, personally, using to display documents saved in UTF-8 as US ASCII?
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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#52 Ed Iglehart
"Douglas, please come back through some wormhole and give us a hand....please!"
Absolutely! You are, however, the first denizen of Her Majesty's former American colonies I have come across who appreciates that the ASCII 127 character set was not created perfect in every way. More power to your elbow.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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Having studied the visual science of reading at uni, I agree with the people who say that it takes more effort to read these longer lines. I think the new page layout *looks* fantastic, but the legibility is completely undermined by the wider blog columns. It's also considerably more daunting being faced with what (in other blogs) seems like an endless mass of text. I imagine this will put a lot of people off reading some good material (it has already put me off reading one blog).
If the text width was the same as that of the main news section, I would be more than content.
PLEASE listen to all this feedback. It really irks us license-fee payers when we see that we aren't listened to. It's almost as futile as getting the government to listen to sense, sometimes.
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#59 dhwilkinson
I'm sorry - maybe it's just late or maybe I'm just losing the will to live with the BBC's unconcern at our inability to express ourselves in "ordinary" terms - but I still don't follow what you mean re ASCII characters above 127.
My understanding of ASCII is that 0 to 127 are set in tablets of silicon but that 128 and above are platform-specific. Can you please quote a link to what you regard as a "definitive" 8-bit ASCII character set?
Also, although the symbol for the EUR currency is in UTF-8, I haven't ever come across it in ASCII and note that none of your examples seem to show it.
Engough for tonight, I think, especially with the mod queue still 2.5hrs+ after midnight. Goodnight all.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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#59 - dhwilkinson
Thank you for that. Out of interest, is there any way of extending that to take into account central European character sets (&+#+336,337 and &+#+368,369) or characters with umlauts (&+uuml; (252)) or am I pushing my luck? This would be very helpful on Mark Mardell's blog especially.
Test - Ã$, ã, Ã¥, é, ÃÀ, ÃÂ, ÃÁ, ÃÃ, ÃÅ, ÃÄ, ÃÇ, ÃÈ, ÃÉ, ÃË, ÃÉ, ÃÌ, ÃÍ, ÃÎ, ÃÏ, ÃÒ, ÃÔ, ÃÖ, ÃÓ, ÃÕ, ÃÙ, ÃÚ, ÃÛ, ÃÜ, Ãß, Ãá, Ãâ, Ãà, Ãã, Ãä, Ãæ, Ãç, Ãè, Ãê, Ãé, Ãë, Ãì, Ãí, Ãî, Ãï, Ãò, Ãó, Ãô, Ãõ, Ãö, Ãù, Ãú, Ãû.
This routine really does not like u with an umlaut:-((
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#56 threnodio
You're spot on there - even more so after 01:00 GMT with the mod queue still well over 90 minutes.
Reactive or post-moderation is even more important than being unable to use the English language properly.
I'd happily accept the 5-bit Baudot character set if we had that prize on the main political threads.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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#2 & #61,
Mine's at the bottom. Is this a browser compliance issue?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Why is the list of bookmark links at the bottom of blog posts inconsistent with those at the bottom of news articles?
More importantly, why isn't there a Facebook share link? How many people use del.icio.us or Reddit (a service which I had never even heard of) compared to Facebook?
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Giles,
I thought the whole point of Blogs was for it to be a conversation between the posters and the blogger. Can you speak to Nick Robinson and let him know this. He never contibutes anything to the blog after his initial post. Not exactly a conversation!
Many Thanks
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the new blog pages seem out of focus compared to the rest of the site. Really gives me a headache.
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Oh, I'm running Mac OSX 10.5.6 with firefox 3.0 and 3.1
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#67 ad-nauseous
"Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!"
You/us won't get that from the BBC, as publisher they are legally responsible for what is published through their web servers (all of which are probably in the UK), just because 'Joe Soap' posted the comment it will be the publisher who will get hauled before the courts.
Read this;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/03/bbc_moderation_the_law_and_cen_2.html
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I think you've forgotten the first law of engineering here: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Seriously, did you make these changes as a considered response to user feedback about shortcomings with the old system, or just for the sake of change?
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#70
"More importantly, why isn't there a Facebook share link?"
Why is the BBC promoting such commercial social networking sites, that's the real question!
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#71
Never mind Nick Robinson's blog, it would be nice to read some follow up comments from Giles about the real issues being discussed here! His silence is even more deafening than that of the BBC correspondence, after all blogging is not their prime 'reason for being', unlike those responsible for the BBC blog service...
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#72/73
"the new blog pages seem out of focus compared to the rest of the site. Really gives me a headache".
Same here. I'm on Mac 10.4.
It's also very odd when you try and select text.
They've also not over-ridden the default font for the comment entry box I'm currently typing in, so we've got this awful typewriter-like courier font, which could be painlessly solved by adding this to their CSS:
textarea#dna-commentbox-text { font: 11px verdana,arial,sans-serif; }
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presentation over content -- yawn..
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#78
"...so we've got this awful typewriter-like courier font..."
Err, a perfect font, easy to read by all, the blog text-entry box is about the only thing that is right about the new look blogs - almost felt like leaving the "L" out of that last word!
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Giles, your picture looks as though someone has drawn a goatee and glasses on your face. Is this some sort of disguise?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
interested to see how long this roll out will take to reach north Britain for example - blether with brian?
cheers Sid
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So to get £ you type the 'A' with circumflex(ahem - hat) then the pound sign? Sweet!
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I'm afraid I must echo the view of many others - the previous narrower columns were much easier to read, whilst the new design seems to have too much white space. It's always good to experiment and innovate, but that doesn't mean that innovation always works. Something closer to the previous format would be better.
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In an effort to avoid this comment being thrown out as "off topic", may I ask whether the "new look" has taken account of the new release of IE? And, in case anyone might want to see how the 'new look' looks in alternative browsers, may I point out the link at the bottom, which provides the opportunity to try four different browsers...
IE8 released at Mix; will it cripple the web-user experience?
But, for those who want to avoid the impending web browsing experience massacre, you can always switch to another browser.
;-)
bae
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The page length is now (with around 80 odd replies) the same as the old 'narrow' style was when it had 400 plus replies, so we know have less content taking up more space - and that is on a blog were the original (BBC) entry was quite short compared to some! Crazy, yet more proof of a triumph for style over content/userbility...
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Sorry, can't see how the width change and more white space is an improvement.
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62 browndov
These blogs will display all these UTF-8 Illegal characters if you set the character encoding on the browser to ISO 8859-1 that is what I mean when I say ascii. You need to display UTF-8 as if it were ISO-8859-1 (ascii) then cut and paste it into the comment box. Not all characters will work though as some ISO 8859-1 characters are dangerous control characters blocked by the system. EG the Euro is impossible as well as the capital A circumflex{A^] one of the characters needed is blocked.
0 to 127 US ascii(1 character) 128 to 191 requires a control character a bit like a shift key to access one of several blocks of 64 characters. character 192+ are the control characters needed by 128 to 191 . That is my understanding of UTF-8 up to ascii(255) at least.
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#90
You might be correct in what you say but really it's not the issue, such changes should not be required so that people can use $, € or £ - period - I can understand why the USD $ and percentage % characters get baulked at as they are used in server side scripting.
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The blog pages look much clearer which makes them more readable.
If you're a speed reader of blogs, why are you even using a website - sure it's more efficient to use a feed reader - must admit this is the first time I've been directly on the blog section of the BBC site for a long time.
Oh and blog means web log so it's not a conversation between the reader and publisher. I guess it is nice to get updates or responses to user comments though
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Looks good and easy to follow. But this is for Justin as a suggestion. The US is now investigating Dick Cheney's assassinate squad he set up during his White House years. You might want to look into that as I remember reading about Dr. David Kelly's death. Now I never really believed he killed himself as he knew to much information about how the Iraq information was cherry picked to got along with Bush''s illegal invasion. For some reason it always bothered me that something didn't sit right about that case. As Cheney has his assassination squad sent all over the World you might want to check out the US investigation on it as it might give some answers to things we didn't know.
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I'm wondering why you have dropped the box containing recent topics on the blog along with the number of comments, that was a very useful way of navigating between ongoing topics. Now we need to return to the main page of the blog and drop to a topic we have been contributing to, so I don't see that as an improvement but more a loss of a useful facility.
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Re use of non-standard characters - pound-signs and the like.
Is it beyond the wit of those with influence to provide a selection of such characters via a 'keyboard' placed immediately below the "Your Comment" box - on a 'click to insert this character' basis - since many, particularly financial (and political) blog pages are blighted with 'character not available' placeholders?
The result would then be that any change to formatting/rendering would not rely upon the level of technical know-how of users.
Bold/italic/etc., buttons could also be provided, enhancing the experience for users - respondents and casual readers both.
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Buzet (94),
Scroll down to see what you're missing.
;-)
ed
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95
Re use of non-standard characters - pound-signs and the like.
Is it beyond the wit of those with influence to provide a selection of such characters via a 'keyboard' placed immediately below the "Your Comment" box - on a 'click to insert this character' basis - since many, particularly financial (and political) blog pages are blighted with 'character not available' placeholders?
_____________________________________________________________
There should be no need for a special keyboard. All that needs to happen is for either to Comments box text to be encoded into UTF-8 or the page Character encoding to be set to ISO 8859-1/8859-15 like the BBC News website. Its standard characters on the keyboard that cannot be printed. Charmap in windows or similar can be used to type non standard characters.
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#97
So everyone who posts a comment needs to be a computer whiz-kid then? I doubt that, if you mentioned "windows charter map" to many, you would get nothing more than a blank look in return! What was suggested @ 95 is a standard solution to frequently used special charters on many forums etc, it would be nice if the BBC could act on such a suggestion as it would also allow people to (as mentioned) use bold, italic, underlined and even the correct URL formatting without needing to know any (X)HTML mark-up language.
On that sibject, what is the correct formatting that will be accepted by the server, as the usual mark-up gets rejected?...
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PLEASE allow us to edit our posts, we often make typos, spelling mistakes or forget words, its incredibly annoying that we cant edit our posts, please allow us to edit our own posts!
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Samuel (99),
If you use the preview feature, you can check for typos and correct them before posting.
Using the rules worked out by D H Wilkinson, I have added the codes for some useful characters to my Tutorial. the codes can be copied and pasted direct into this comment box, and will appear correctly when the page is refreshed...
Alternatively, you can copy the list below and save it to a textfile. You can then use them copied from your own textfile (or "notebook"):
GBP symbol- £ (type £)
Yen symbol- ¥ (type ¥)
Copyright symbol- © (type ©)
Less than- < (type < OR <)
More than- > (type > OR >)
Ampersand- & (type & OR &)
a acute- á (type á)
e acute- é (type é)
i acute- à (type í)
o acute- ó (type ó)
u acute- ú (type ú)
a umlaut- ä (type ä)
o umlaut- ö (type ö)
u umlaut- ü (type ü)
Good luck
ed
Thanks again to D H Wilkinson
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#99
"PLEASE allow us to edit our posts"
I can't see that happening because the message would have to rejoin the moderation cue, any way people most accept that tpyos and speiling mitsakes occur and don't judge the content of the message on how it's presented (also, for some, English is not their native language or they might suffer from dyslexia etc. so might not even realise that they have made a mistake), the problem that the BBC would have otherwise is people posting a benign message but once accepted editing it to say something far from benign.
See my earlier message @ 74 for a link to an the problems the BBC face as publishers of content within these blogs.
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98 boilerplated
Sorry but this comment page and the comment box don't fully speak the same language. so when you type £ you get £. The pound sign is there but is shown wrongly as an illegal character(a diamond or a box). You shouldn't need to go to view/character encoding/iso 8859-1 Western European to display it but you do. thats the beebs fault not mine. The other method I am suggesting is so more techical minded people can use so others don't have to go to those lengths. I don't disagree with putting a keyboard with financial symbols,smileys,dingbats etc. just that the bigger issue here is printing normal characters accessible from the keyboard. I can't see a reason why wasn't fixed. Doesn't mean there isnt a reason.
On that sibject, what is the correct formatting that will be accepted by the server, as the usual mark-up gets rejected?...
Not sure what you mean. maybe you are using the wrong direction slash to close the Html code. like I just did.
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#102
Thanks to "Born Again" and his tutorial hopefully the URL formatting is sorted. I still think that the BBC should offer a special characters / functions keyboard though as most people will be totally lost with all this talk of character encoding or HTML code formatting etc.
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#90 dhwilkinson,
#66 threnodio,
#98 Boilerplated &
#100 Ed the chameleon
Sorry if it's a little long, but please read this whole message before responding.
Thanks for the "cheat sheet", dhwilkinson. I do now understand what can be achieved with the various ASCII code pages, and the fact that the EUR character is absent from them. Maybe that explains why the BBC have used UTF-8 as being a reasonable compromise, which does include the EUR and most of the characters with diacritics, including all of the central european ones threnodio wants, not to mention cyrillic, Greek and some non-european ones.
However, the trouble with the solution you're using is that not only is it too "fiddly" for most users, but except in the cases of the £ and simple diacritics like Âü, Âè, Âé, Âí, Âó and Âç, the ISO to UTF match is not exact, hence the inability to get the EUR [€€€s] symbol to display correctly.
But this is truly a case where it's not broke, so we the users shouldn't need to try to fix it!
If you look at these characters via the Preview button, they display correctly, and they also appear correctly after posting if viewed via our user profiles: dhwilkinson, threnodio or Brownedov.
Unfortunately, another little bug in the BBC system - long since reported - means that to traverse our posts you need to compensate for the fact that the "skip" parameter adds or subtracts 25 for each Older or Newer pressed, but each screen displays only 10 posts! The first three Older "skip" parameters should be 11, 21 and 31.
Accordingly, it is not our comments in error but the BBC's renderer in extracting our posts from the database where Movable Type stores them. The pages are now so complex that it is hard to spot where, but I suspect that the CSS is at fault.
Apologies for not posting this sooner, but yesterday's long outage of the entire system and personal commitments on Saturday made it impossible for me to post sooner.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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I love the new look but the wider blog column makes reading it hard work and tempted me not to read as many comments.
Also, the 'post a comment' box should be repeated at the bottom for those not signed in. Otherwise once you've read everybody else's comments you have to scroll up again and look around for the button to comment.
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Here's a novel idea to implement when you re-jig this blog, when I press shift+3 I get a pound sign (not really rocket science is it?)
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#104
"Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!"
You'll never get that "Brownedov" (if you do I'll first buy a hat and then eat it!), see THIS for why, some blogs can probably get away with reactive moderation due to the fact that their (blogging) servers are located outside the UK.
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re 104
The included link should have formatted to offer this URL;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/03/bbc_moderation_the_law_and_cen_2.html but the BBC's blogs render engine seems to have bunged a HTML
line-wrap tag in the middle of it!
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108 boilerplated
Your link contained 1 long word bbc_moderation_the_law_and_cen. which is word wrapped onto the next line when I tried it. Those wordwrap linebreak codes were maybe included as part of the link when it was created.
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#107 Boilerplated
"You'll never get that 'Brownedov'"
The link you quote [now working] is arguably a reason why no BBC blogs should be post or reactive moderated, since such material could be posted on any of the many non-political and few political threads which are moderated in those ways currently.
In practice, it would be far more effective to post-moderate all threads and only to permanently pre-moderate persistent offenders. The few such posts which got through should be relatively easy to spot and, wanting to keep it that way, other posters would aid the process by "shopping" errant posts by means of the complain link provided next to every post.
I shan't be holding my breath in anticipation of your hat-buying and eating spree, though.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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Another thing I can't understand about the BBC blogs, why is it that one has to jump through the same hoops so many times, I'm logged in to the BBC blogs (to comment here) but I need to log in again to comment on either the "Have your say" or the sports "606" pages - again the BBC is showing that the left hand is being kept in the dark as to what the right hand is doing - come on BBC On-Line, one log-in, one cookie, should give access to all blogs and boards as the information asked for is all the same.
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[ In response to comments made @ 109 ]
Mods, this is a TEST, please do not reject it, there is no test blog and the preview doesn't always render the same as the blog output.
This was the link to the article about BBC moderation policy that I was trying to post, the HTML code has been created on one line and there is no line wrap (<br>) within the raw URL although there is a forced line wrap within the text-input box, does it now work correctly once on the blog - It works OK in the preview mode.
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Boilerplated (112),
It's not just a <br> ordinary linebreak; it's a newfangled xhtml 'self-closing' linebreak <br /> and it seems to render the url ok for non-firefox browsers...(any confirmations from IE or Safari, etc. users?) Does the link at #112 work in your browsers?
I find it's simplest to just delete out the <br /> in the address bar and hit return - a drag, but not a huge bother.
Slainté
ed
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The new look will take some getting used to. I'm indifferent about it really.
I guess it's a sign of the times, but in the early days of the web - the BBC used to set trends. Now it follows them.
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It hurts my eyes! There's too much bright white, the text is too light, and the lines are too long to read comfortably. Have tried Firefox zoom options but no real improvement, so won't be visiting much in future.
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#113 Born Again Ed
FWIW, in WinXPsp3 using latest IE7, the links in both#107 and #112 work "straight out of the box" and no <br /> is visible either when hovering over the link or in the address bar after Copy Shortcut followed by a paste.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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it's nice
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Brownedov (116)
The links also work fine in IE8. It does seem to be specific to firefox....the link in #108 works fine, but the other two collect the rogue linefeed.
Puzzled ed
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All three links (107, 108, 112) work in Opera as well, so it must be specific to firefox
Hesiod
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As one of many people on my platform (Linux), along with MacOS users, confused at your use of extended ASCII still. Everything on my system, by default from install, is set to en_GB.UTF8 so I have no problems with any British characters, British punctuation (‘’“” etc), and currency £ using applications and websites.
So why are we penalised because you cant spend the time to find a solution? It has been many months since the blogs appeared and we’ve been complaining since then.
I suggest you consider why you’re only accepting ASCII on a blog that’s published as UTF-8, as it just confuses everything.
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It just scrolls far too slowly, which means it's frustrating if you return to it when you have a quick 5 mins and you need to get to where you were before! So to speak.
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Im using Safari browser and the text-font looks like its been scrawled using eye-liner or possibly badly photocopied. All smudged-- looks incredibly amateurish. I also prefer paragraphs to be right and left justified for easier reading.
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BBC's website's core product is news content. Interface is by definition its most used graphic tool. The eye is a powerful organ that captures nearly equally the obvious and its surroundings: everything is taken from it. Said that, I agree with some people here that a narrowed series of columns would produce more reading flow. I also would suggest a radical, strict use of one font type and one size only, with in it its possible variations (bold, corsivo etc.). In western reading, the action proceeds from left to right, the closest this order the better reading flow it will be; the current blog interface unfortunately doesn't favor the eye to follow this order, with users dropping a spot here and there too many times until the content has a logical line. Technically tough I wanna shake your IT people's hands, its excellent.
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WHen these BBC blogs started, there were frequent updates by the blogger, responding to the most important themes arising from the comments. These seem to have become much less common and this blog from Giles Wilson deserves a response or two.
First who is Giles Wilson? Can we have (on The Editors page I mean) the job title at the top of the entry please? And can we have a link to comments at the bottom of every entry?
Next I agree with the continuing annoyance of non-US characters not appearing correctly.
Final question: the above post by Giles Wilson says "This week" (posted 18th March) the design for our pages is also changing.
t is now Monday 23rd (therefore "next week") and only a few blogs have changed. Even some with posts dated today still have the old design - Betsan Powys for example. Surely we aren't going to have multiple blog layouts to cope with?
Proper strict moderation on all blogs please. Cut out the off topic stuff that makes some unreadable.
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#124
"Technically tough I wanna shake your IT people's hands, its excellent."
What, even though the use of certain, very common, charters and basic HTML functions are either restricted, have cross-browser computability issues or are totally impossible (for the vast majority of users)?!
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JonChr
See here, at the bottom of another copy of this post without a comments box...
SNAFU
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Agree with the sentiments to conclude job title in the headers, and likewise the width is clearly not the same as the main site (as many can point out) - there is no left navbar which shrinks the news site articles
preview is good, and it's easier to find host comments in grey now
but I feel you could have centralised the blogs a bit - create a proper forum rather than a list of blogs that are sometimes hard to navigate, and do away with 'have your say' at the same time (or create a real forum with the same questions parallel to it) - the moderation is truly annoying and 'have your say' is completely worthless, used as a platform for spammers and trolls
there is also a message when your post is being moderated that implies you are a new member - I'm not, at least I hope I'm not anymore, after a couple of years - somewhat irritating
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#128
[ re the "Have your say" forum and it's misuse by spammers and trolls ]
Not just the HYS forum, many of these blogs get used for grandstanding of off topic political issues/views and, in a few cases, the spamming of other blogs - Mark Mardell, Nick Robinson and Robert Peston's blogs spring to mind - there is one blogger who is clearly spamming his own blog but the mods reject any complaint, just telling us to debate the issue, go figure!
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The layout is LOADS better - the wider looks fits much better.
However, in Google Chrome 2, the font renders horribly - all bitty and jaggedy, at all sizes, whereas other browsers (even Safari) seem to render it OK and Chrome renders everything else OK.
It might be a Chrome issue, but was just checking if it was just me before I log a bug report!
Using XP with standard LCD font smoothing on.
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The new layout is loads better. It's more consistent between blogs, it looks less cluttered, and it's full-width.
A lot of people have left comments complaining about the width - this makes no sense to me. If you find the lines of text too long, just un-maximise your web browser window and change it to whatever width you prefer.
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Good Afternnon Mr Editor,
I've given it a few days before commenting but now, on balance, I feel the wide page format is less enjoyable than the previous one.
It must be something to do with the ability to absorb comments with a single glance rather than scrolling across the fuller screen.
There is probably some scientific explanation for this but I have no idea what it is.
Anyway, for what it's worth that's my opinion.
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Find it much more difficult tor ead
Please put it back the way it was before ie narrower columns
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#133
"A lot of people have left comments complaining about the width - this makes no sense to me. If you find the lines of text too long, just un-maximise your web browser window and change it to whatever width you prefer."
Unfortunately the BBC web site is not fluid in that respect, column width stays the same - people are complaining about line length, not page width.
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129 boilerplated
true, they do - but unfortunately pretty much every forum out there has that issue, and the BBC is a massive site used by millions - it already has heavy moderation and I don't advocate more, waiting can be arduous as it is, at least on the blogs you can occasionally have a debate
imperfect maybe, possibly stop people posting links altogether now everyone has something to promote - I'd be interested to know who is spamming their own blog though?
I can tolerate the blogs, but HYS is a disgrace
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I like the style of the page, but have to agree with problems with column width. News articles are much narrower than the posts on this blog. Keeping text in small columns is web design 101.
Additionally, would be nice to have the option for comment pagination...
Otherwise, nice work :) Good to see the continuing rollout of the new design.
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137
I can live with 'thread drift' but I really do object to other blogs spamming their blogs (and thus boosting their search engine ranking via link ranking), if only the BBC were to have a blitz on such behaviour - not only cancel/remove the messages but terminate/remove both the posting account and the ability to sign-up from the relevant IP address(es) - like Wikipedia does...
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As a general observation I dislike blogs that imitate the style of newspaper layouts too closely, as it adds to the blurring of the line between opinion and fact, blogger and journalist. You risk heading down a tricky road of presenting subjective ponderings as something like fact-checked news -- something that RP gets enough criticism for already.
Nit-picky point: why are the main article heads smaller than the other posts from this blog" ones at the foot of the page?
Re: the text size/line length issue, people can always increase the text size in their browser of course -- perhaps increasing the default size a bit while maintaining the new width will placate the critics there.
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As an ex-printer and typographer this new line length breaks all the known norms for readability. It is indeed too wide for the text size being used resulting in as many as 20 words on a line. Conventionally printed line lengths and text sizes are adjusted/designed for 11 to 14 words per line. Newspapers are designed with very narrow columns, narrow/condensed fonts and less words per line for even quicker readability by vertical only scanning.
Computers introduce additional complications. Firefox can be set for an increased text size which reduces the words per line but not the line length. To reduce the side to side eye scanning of print you could read the document from further away, quite difficult to do on a laptop as the keyboard would be out of reach! All in all, this is an irritating mess.
Nor do I understand the claim to be matching the news site because quite
obviously it does not. The width you are occupying with one line is split into three perfectly readable columns on the news site.
Please consult people who know about design for reading and change it
to something more appropriate as soon as possible.
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2 birds, one stone...
1) Your new blog layout needs to be what your new weather layout is.
2) Your new weather layout needs to be what your new blog layout is.
You currently have it the wrong way round!
A wider main column is less suitable for continuous text.
A shorter main column is less suitable for assorted content elements like weather data and tables that need to be side-by-side.
Both sites are currently suffering because of this.
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Are you aware how frustrating it now is...
a) Having to find the link to log in to comment (on this, the blog detail page)?
Why not just place it at the top and/or bottom of the page, perhaps in addition to where it currently is? Having to locate and scroll to the joining point between blog and comments is not my idea of usability.
b) How much slower it now is for pages to load if the blog has many comments.
I'm on an extremely fast connection in a supposedly fast-rendering browser. Other pages are fine. The blogs area is now noticeably more sluggish. 140 comments (at the time of writing) is not a huge amount to load in, is it?
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How come the world has not gotten an answer to these economic melt down,that is wounderful.Some one should come up with a better theory that will help put things better cos people are dying ,nations are crying ,business are folding up by the day and already made theory failing us .Where has all the monies gone to,Who is now better with these thread? Life has come once again with it's unending lessons.
Genesis Igbokwe
[Personal details removed by Moderator]
Nigeria.
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Perhaps it's been said -- I confess I haven't read the comments -- but signing in to comment can be a nuisance. First you scroll to the bottom to read the latest. Then you scroll to the top and down a little bit to sign in. If the comments have gone to multiple pages, this sets you back to page 1 and you have to navigate to the current page. If there are more than two pages, this requires at least two clicks.
Also by putting the count of postings at the bottom of the comments, you have effectively hidden the most popular blogs from general awareness.
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#145
"If the comments have gone to multiple pages, this sets you back to page 1 and you have to navigate to the current page. If there are more than two pages, this requires at least two clicks."
Try opening the relevant page (log-in or otherwise) in a new browser window or tab rather than using the back buttons - most of these options are (if available) accessed via the (mouse/tabbed) context menu.
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The new layout is OK except you need to limit the number of posts per page so that page load time is reduced. You should use a paginator (previous next etc) to move between pages. I agree with others that the main column is perhaps too wide. Maybe you could simply allow readers to customise the width? The main news page does not have any columns this wide.
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Further to my last comment.... You should add a left-hand column (the same width as the main news page menu) and move the "Other News Blogs" to it. Then change the name to "News Blogs" and include the currently displayed blog in the menu with a hightlight( exactly as you do for the main news page).
Now the layout will truely match the main news site.
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Previously when I clicked into my profile then clicked onto a blog comment I had previously made it took me to the associated blog at the position in the comments list I had made it, useful because I could then see if anyone made any comments in response to my comments. Now it just takes you back to the blog article at the top.
Can you correct this function back to how it was?
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Your new design is fine. But I am being nearly driven out of my mind by the Moderators on Peston's Picks
who decided yesterday morning that I was a 'new member'. They keep sending the message beginning
"Where is my message..." -that explains procedure to new members -
They can't be reading my frequent posts asking them to stop treating me as a new member.
Can you help. I've complained by phone and e-mail but no result
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
#150
"who decided yesterday morning that I was a 'new member'. They keep sending the message beginning"
If you actually read that message carefully it's meaning is quite telling, are the BBC contemplating a period of probation and once past (without to many 'bad marks', aka rejected comments) one will be retro/reactively moderated?...
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Boilerplated (152),
"a period of probation and once past (without to many 'bad marks', aka rejected comments) one will be retro/reactively moderated?..."
This sort of system already operates on the PM blog, but without any notice of explanation. New posters simply see their comments "await moderation", while comments from "trusties" appear, leading to much frustration. If they never get round to making the minimum number of comments, they never "get it".
Much room for improvement remains...
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Certainly change for changes sake. I dread going to the BBC website now. The weather site is unrocognisable. Iplayer is changing yet again. Blogs have been changed. I wonder how people find the time to learn their way round these continuous changes? When changes are made - couldn't a brief resume of how the new pages work be put at the top of changed pages?
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Much, much, much, much BETTER! Cleaner, clearer, nicer, easier...maybe those that don't like it could change the font/font size in their browser, it could be it looks wierd with tiny font or something: I say this because I can't believe the many comments on here that don't like it.
Any chance of a log-in page on the blogs? As it is I come in via the messageboards.
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I agree with many of the contributors here regarding the line length being too long and so causing the eyes to have to scan more than should be required.
I like the clean look but would prefer a three column layout, as suggested in previous comments, which would have the benefit of reducing the line length.
Take a look at The Guardian website to see how it should be done.
The problems with the preview box, i.e. not really giving you a preview of what your content will 'actually' look like, should have been addressed by now.
Good effort - must try harder!
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Either it has not been explained, or there is problem.
I used to stream NEWSHOUR and would get a fairly recent discussion of the day's news.
NOW, I find that the "current" offering is 48 hours behind.
Is this an error or are you sinking NEWSHOUR on purpose?
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Is anyone ever going to reply to the comments and complaints?
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#155
As most people who have commented don't seem to like the new style perhaps you could change the font in your browser...
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Not pleased. They are very hard to scroll down (or up). By the way, interesting that you have shut down all the blogs. Was the latest about Jacqui Smith getting too 'hot'? The Moderators must be working at top rates, with bonuses, poor dears, since I am sure most comments are difficult to pass the Thought Police. It's a shame since so many of us enjoy blogging, but there are plenty of other forums opening up which allow freedom of expression. The irony is that they are all free and we pay your wages, through the Licence fees.
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I preferred the old format.
Another thing, why are blogs now being closed when there is still plenty of lively debate? The blog at the top of Nick Robinson's list is already closed, there are no others there, which means he currently has no open blogs. Dare I suggest this smacks of cencorship? People are trying to make their feelings known on this blog, and ar being blocked.
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Can't say I am too bothered either way about the new style. I cannot see it is much of an improvement just a new lick of paint.
The main problems are (1) Long moderation times stifle debate; (2) Rejected comments can occur after posting and no explanation is given - surely a simple comment could be posted; (3) Blogs are closed for comments very quickly; (4) For the Nick Robinson blog it seems we are only party to 1 blog a week. Major new stories are debated on the blogs long before an new thread is started.
A new lick of paint is not the way to improve these blogs.
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The new blog style is very NewLabour, all style over substance.
Up to three hour delays in moderation, comments removed with no explanation from or right of appeal to the moderators, and now blogs are closed to new comments, so effectively you have gagged your audience, and more importantly your paymasters, from contributing.
Yes, very NewLabour, I can see why you have made the changes.
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#163
Thanks for taking this blog way off topic, if you have a complaint then this is the web page you actually need;
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
That said, to the points you raised:
"and more importantly your paymasters,"
Err you don't need to have a TV never mind pay the licence fee to access the BBC web site so that sort of rational doesn't wash here, for all anyone knows the person making a comment could be living in Timbuktu!
The BBC, like any publisher, has to have the ability to choose what to publish as they are legally liable for what they publish as it would be the BBC who could end up in court.
As for the BBC closing the ability for people to leave comments, if you want to push the point, then I for one would prefer that the BBC remove the ability comments from all blogs rather than allow them to be used by those who are more interested in having a political 'rant' than actually having an intelligent debate, I for one have given up on both Mardell's Euroblog, Peston's Picks and Robinson's Newslog because they, and any attempts to have a reasoned debate of the issues raised, are always swamped by the rent-a-mob politicos...
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Groovy
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I make the assumption that these blogs are written in your own time and not paid for by licence fee payers. There is enough garbage from the Government News Channell (the BBC) without you lot adding your opinions. Journalists and editors should report news, not their opinions. I am sick and tired of the lot of you
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#166
Would you like some more nutty fruit-cake with your cup of tea sir?...
Oh, nice rant by the way!
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Nick Robinsons blog is fast becoming a joke.
Today, 01.04.2009. at 04:12
On the two current blogs the wait for moderation is in excess of 2 hours. It has at times been 3 and even 4 hours.
------------------------
A familiar divide
55. At 2:04pm on 01 Apr 2009, Susan-Croft
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
--------------------------------------------
The blame game
38. At 2:14pm on 01 Apr 2009, ngodinhdiem
This comment is awaiting moderation. Explain.
--------------------------------------------------
Surely introducing some form of post moderation or reactive moderation would improve things.
------------------------------
http://www.bbc.co.uk/messageboards/newguide/popup_checking_messages.html
Pre-moderation - every single message is checked before it appears on the board. All of the BBC's children's message boards are supervised in this way.
------------------------------
By your own admission pre-moderation is for kiddies. Do you not think we deserve better?
I like the new design but go along with other bloggers:
1 - The message line is to long.
2 - Not being able to us HTML blockquotes makes it harder to display quoted sections.
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Keep going lads its all fine! If I can manage it anyone can, the only thing that worries me is who is moderating the moderator?
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Today Nick Robinson's blog not a sign of moderator for 2hrs well up to speed service Not
I think when you reject a blog you should give an full explanation I had several rejected and unpublished for no apparent reason could not have been for content as I try not to be offensive?
It would also be nice if we had a Tory and lib dem leaning journo's to give balance to the bigoted left wing diatribe that we get from Nick Liebour Robinson.
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This is the first blog I've joined (this morning), and I had expected to be able to follow threads in a tree structure? Was that too ambitious? I'm finding it far too time consuming to follow topics, scrolling down to see if anyone has replied. Is there a way of focussing on specific threads?
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#170
"Liebour"
Sorry but if you knew anything about the person you were commenting about you would realise how silly that comment was...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Robinson
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Much of a muchness to be honest. I personally preferred the old layout, but hey, who am I to stand in the way of progress?
The only annoying thing is inconsistent moderation and waiting times on some threads of between three and five hours.
Sorry guys, but waiting that long for a post to be moderated, if you are sure about running these blogs 24/7 is inexcusably poor service.
Who are the mods? BBC employees or is it part of the outsourcing deal to Siemens Business Services?
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The revision of the blogs makes them useless to me.
I have not got the patience to watch video clips instead of reading, neither do I want to puzzle my way through the maze of vague, irrelevant and ambiguous links which are plastered everywhere.
It looks to me like a characteristic "make-work" excercise for the BBC staff and their sub-contractor pals.
Peston's blog was worth following, this new mess is not.
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172 Boilerplated:
Interesting that by your own admission you do not read Nick Robinson's blogs, and instead rely on a one page biography to form your opinion on him.
Perhaps more reading of the subject material would be appropriate.
For your information, the main criticism of Nick Robinson is that he is escessively in favour of the party in power. This is not a labour bias, although it happens to be at the moment. Quote from your very own source:
"Media monitoring group Media Lens used part of an article written by Nick Robinson, on the subject of the invasion of Iraq, to illustrate their view that mainstream journalism has become largely associated with promoting the interests of those who hold power:
"In the run-up to the conflict, I and many of my colleagues, were bombarded with complaints that we were acting as mouthpieces for Mr Blair. Why, the complainants demanded to know, did we report without question his warning that Saddam was a threat? Hadn't we read what Scott Ritter had said or Hans Blix? I always replied in the same way. It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking... That is all someone in my sort of job can do."[
Unquote.
And since Cameron has been none to subtle about his intentions towards the BBC, do you not think there might be more than a touch of self interest creeping in?
In any case, it is impossible to take someone seriously when their only source of knowledge is Wikipedia. And as for your "reasoned debate of the issues raised, are always swamped by the rent-a-mob politicos...", I can only wish you a long and painful fall from the high horse of your over inflated ego. Many people enjoy using the comments to discuss/ argue their political views. If you do not, I daresay the problem is yours, not everyone elses.
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At #168 I wrote:
Nick Robinsons blog is fast becoming a joke.
I must apologise I got it wrong - It is a joke!
That blog has now shut down until after Easter. Over recent days blogs have been closed without notice or giving any reason why!
The last blog sat for many hours with a broken link.
You could at least notify people what is going on. Or at least display a notice such as - We are currently experiencing problems, Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Its not rocket science just common courtesy. The way you are operating the NR blog currently displays contempt to its users.
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#175
"Interesting that by your own admission you do not read Nick Robinson's blogs, and instead rely on a one page biography to form your opinion on him."
How about trying to actually read what I said rather t5han comment on what you though (or wished?) I said...
What I actually said was that I had given up reading the follow up comments in those blogs, I still read the article (assuming that I'm interested in the subject being talked about), your rant has done nothing to make me change my mind on the worth of such follow up comments - those trying to push their political leanings are as off topic as usual...
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I too am not comfortable with longer lines of text - it's well known (except by the BBC web developers, it seems) that long lines are more difficult to read, as one can lose the place (where's the next line) so much more easily. I may well have commented before it came about, but pleased to see that not only am I not alone in commenting on it, but others have more recent experience, and even professional experience.
So, who exactly *wanted* the columns (and overall layout) to be wider (?) - staff in the BBC with modern widescreen laptops, puzzled at the 'empty canvass' over to the right, or some attempt to fill the space for the new generation of students, wedded to laptops at universities across the UK, perhaps ?
I guess none of you have seen how things look on 800x600 screens, or have you? Or visit some 'silver surfer' and see how much larger they want the text, so it now looks pretty awful... or on some other browsers, perhaps.
I suppose it's a case of "like it or lump it" but there's no change likely.
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#176
"I must apologise I got it wrong - It is a joke!
That blog has now shut down until after Easter. Over recent days blogs have been closed without notice or giving any reason why!"
From Nick Robinson's Newlog;
"Though merely a humble witness to the saving
of the world and the turning of the page and
the creation of a new world order, I do now
feel in need of a lie down - so I'm off on my
hols and back after Easter."
Were is the problem in that, are you seriously suggesting that you never take time off or that you think that BBC employees should work 365 days a year, I'm sure that if Brown calls an election or someone is assassinated Nick will be back as quickly as he can find a WiFi access point!
Sorry but it seems to me that some people really do need to get their heads out of their computer screens, have some strong black coffee and then go outside for a nice deep breath of fresh air as they seem to have a real bad dose of cabin fever...
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BBC has done more good than harm in this world. Today is my 39th Wedding Anniversary. Although we are separated for a few years, I want to confirm that I have learnt a lot of practical things from my wife. She is a high powered nutirtionist and a high powered yoga teacher, a unique combination. I would like the BBC to give her a chance to present one or more Healthy Eating slots with a live telephone phone-in while she is giving the talk at least for one hour. If it becomes a success, then BBC can consider giving her a longer term chance and the way we behave according to your blog may change shopping, cooking and eating habits of many British poeple for the better.
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Could you remove the F1 posts that have not `passed` the house rules.?
...there is quite a lot.
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#181
Form an orderly line please, and wait your turn, they have still to remove all the off topic comments that have suddenly started to appear in this blog...
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I am surprised that Nick's blogs have been closed for further comments.
More surprised that the BBC fails to offer the courtesy of explaining why this happened.
Is it a lack of moderators? (I assume they take holidays, too...)
Is it too expensive?
Is there too much comment critical of politicians?
What's going on?
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#183
There is another possibility, that far to many of the comments are way off topic and that the BBC have at last realised that people are miss using the blog - a bit like how some are miss using THIS blog to complain about another. If you don't like how the BBC is doing something then do feel free to read the following web page...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
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I agree with the majority of posts - the lines are tooooooo loooooong!
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The forums have notified us, once again, that each debate is closed and there are none available save this one. Attempting to sign in is also difficult, suddenly passwords become unrecognised and one's movements are "locked". Oh dear, perhaps it's just as well, because looking at the forums it seems so many moderations have taken place, and it wasn't even the weekend yet! Those of us who are mobile should get out in the fresh air and see the lovely spring flowers.
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#186
"The forums have notified us, once again, that each debate is closed and there are none available save this one."
What utter nonsense, the only blog I've seen (having had a quick 'click-around) that has been closed - as of 20:35 - is Nick Robinson's blog, even the much miss used (in my opinion) Peston's Picks is still open for comments...
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#187 Boilerplated
What's the matter, didn't you pick the right horse in the Grand National?
Goodnight, and sweet dreams!
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these comments are *so* funny...
silly people
If slightly rotating ones head and moving ones eyes back and forth along a line of text is too much for some people, just give up. Put out repeats of Tom and Jerry.
I think it looks miles better
nick
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I think it looks miles better"
Me too Nick, but I do miss my blockquote
;-)
Hesiodos
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I like the wider column look but it looks like something is going wrong in comments with anchor text references in the comments section now. E.g. the link http://www.wonkie.com/2009/04/03/motlanthe-addresses-the-g20-summit/ works fine but if it presented as a readable text link like this: Africa at the G20 summit the same link does not work.. a bug or am I just not following some standard properly?
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Murphy's Law - now it works - it didn't on a previous post!
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Sizwe Mahlala,
It's possible you're using firefox? If so, there is a bug which inserts a "rogue" linefeed ( <br /> ) into some urls. The link then gives a "page not found" or similar error.
But if you look in the address bar, you can usually find the roguee and delete it. Then the url will work (just click "enter" or "return")
Hope that helps
;-)
Helpful hints here
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Dear BBC Team,
I like this new changes.When compared to previous blogs,this new one is easily viewable,attractive,interesting.
Still, many editors can join ,write their briefing on news,sports,entertainment,travel,and can slect best comments from members for further lively actions.
Inspite of more hours with BBC Services,network,i am finding very difficult situations for writing of my views by on the spot.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Dear Journalist friend
well and wish to hear the same from you.
I am writing a lot on recent tennis,cricket and football matches to this well known news channel
All BBC Sports coverages,videos,and comments are very nice.
Now,BBC had decided to give interesting,forthcoming league football matches.
Happy to get more and more sports events,analysis,and comments from its users.
thanks.,
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No link to the Ospreys on the BBC sports-rugby site. Why is this ?
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