New AFL site (suggestions, complaints and compliments)

[Ecky]

Here is a good overview of the fiasco for those who don't want to read 1000 posts of complaints!

http://www.crikey.com.au/Media/20070423-AFL-Telstra-online-debacle.html

 

[mcgarnacle]

AFL official website

the ladder is updated for Round 2.....we're about to begin rd 5 on wednesday.

extremely professional AFL. just like the match-day playing kit issues, tribunal, drugs policies, etc.

what a joke.

 

[retroparty]

Re: AFL official website

Yep. One of the most unorganised websites going around. But I do like gameday live. Very good service.

 

[#1 Dogs Fan]

Re: AFL official website

haha it does have heaps of problems the old Afl website.

 

[Borgsta]

Finally some of my persistence has paid off as Realfooty has finally removed their +/- column and replaced it with a % column (albeit no decimal places). Although they haven't corrected the quarter by quarter scores for St Kilda v Essendon yet. So maybe persistence does pay off, but realfooty.com.au is a much cleaner/simpler site than afl.com.au, and I have no faith in the future of afl.com.au.

Realfooty now actually has 2 decimal places so well done.

 

[red+black]

Realfooty now actually has 2 decimal places so well done.

I know! As you can see 2dp is needed as Collingwood > St Kilda by 0.02%.

Whoever you are at RealFooty (it could be Rohan cos I emailed him this morning), you're a champ

Although there's still this:

Unable to determine if or how afl.com.au is progressing though.

 

[Linda Crescent]

'red+black', I think we're slowly getting somewhere re the ladders on AFL & Real Footy sites. Keep posting.

The AFL website 'full ladder' now displays a total percentage figure. Unfortunately there are no decimal points (yet?). Hope this will be seen to and that the club names will be listed in full, not as they are now (nicknames - so NRL !).

I too am impressed with the action taken to sort out the Real Footy ladder (finally). Your persistance has paid off.

 

[fishmonger]

I wonder if the AFL marketing guys are looking at their webstats.

I haven't visited their stupid unusable crapp ass site since last year.

 

[Rorschach2]

Hey Sandy, here's a pro-tip: Bigpond TV is turning away almost half of your audience

According to the latest W3C browser stats [ http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp ] 44% of internet users use a browser other than IE6/7, so why is Bigpond TV IE only? Quite frankly it's a disgrace for a company as large as Telstra/Bigpond to deny 44% of it's user base. It's not like this is the website for the Thai restaurant on the corner, this is Australia's largest Telco, a company that is constantly pushing broadband content and internet plans in advertising that costs millions of dollars.

We're talking about all the online videos for the AFL, NRL, Australian Idol and V8 Supercars. Instead of capitalising on all the money that Telstra has spent on the licenses for this much sought after content, they're turning people away.

Anyone not living a pastoral existence has heard about the surge in popularity of video online these days. You-Tube is mentioned in mainstream media daily, iTunes is selling TV-Shows, regular TV is under threat. Now is the time for Bigpond to capitalise on that, but to do so they need to actually let people watch their videos!

Bigpond was sold a lemon by Netventures, which is why we're stuck with the pile of festering crap that is Bigpond TV. Netventures seem like a great company, check out their awesome website: http://www.netventures.com.au/ It looks like it was created by a High-School Student.

Bigpond, take note of You-Tube, Google Video and any other online video merchant with half a clue. Flash Video is the way to go. 98% of users have flash [ http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/ ], and it works the same way on all OS's and browsers.

 

[red+black]

With thanks to a post from Linda Crescent:

AFL + Telstra = online debacle
- Crikey.com.au, Monday, 23 April 2007
Adam Schwab writes:
When two organisations of the calibre of the AFL and Telstra get together, you can almost guarantee that the result will be a fiasco. So it isn’t surprising that the new AFL website (which is operated by Telstra for the AFL) is one of the worst sports sites on the internet.

Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups
- Crikey.com.au, Tuesday, 24 April 2007

Scroll down to: Telstra and the AFL website:

Craig Middleton, corporate affairs manager, BigPond and Strategic Marketing, writes: Re. "AFL + Telstra = online debacle" - blah

Simon Hoyle writes: shoddy design, difficulty in navigating the site, slowness of loading and generally rotten presentation

Julien Marr writes: It is a useless travesty of sports websites. What is more annoying is that it is worse than it used to be!

Michael Lee writes: This year’s AFL Website is a disgrace, it is cumbersome, slow and overly complex. The ability to watch replays via BigPond TV is limited by the poor resolution quality of the vision, and the sound/commentary appearing to be about three seconds out of sync.

Ian Pavey writes: I was curious to see how bad this site was.

Moreno Giovannoni writes: Fortunately for Essendon supporters we have the Bombers’ own website which is simple and works. I can get my general footy news from Realfooty (The Age website). The AFL/Telstra web site just doesn’t work.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

They need to get rid of all that flash crap.

Flash is passe.

 

[danzan22]

Please go back and look how the NBA site looks and other major sport sites look and try and make it look like them because the AFL site right now is in one word shit.

 

[Storm20]

Please go back and look how the NBA site looks and other major sport sites look and try and make it look like them because the AFL site right now is in one word shit.

ESPN, is the god on which all sporting sites should look up to. Even they are able to have their advertisments, without ****ing up the rest of the page.

 

[Le Maestro]

personally, I prefer the format of the old website.

 

[PumpyChowdown]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I can't get into the DreamTeam to change Hille.

USELESS website.

 

[Footylover1]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I can't get into the DreamTeam to change Hille.

USELESS website.

You can't login because it's always a lockout when a game is on

 

[PumpyChowdown]

You can't login because it's always a lockout when a game is on

This was half an hour before the game started.

 

[Footylover1]

This was half an hour before the game started.

oh! I didn't knew that sorry. That's pretty bad then from the site.

 

[Sandola]

Just went to afl.com to have a quick look at the ladder. Didn't expect the Anzac game results to show up on the ladder yet, but it was pretty amazing to see that both the front-page short version and the full version of the ladder are still the Round Two results.

Clearly, they are no longer reading this thread or (and which d'you reckon is more likely) they really, truly don't care.

 

[Blind Fred]

Just went to afl.com to have a quick look at the ladder. Didn't expect the Anzac game results to show up on the ladder yet, but it was pretty amazing to see that both the front-page short version and the full version of the ladder are still the Round Two results.

Clearly, they are no longer reading this thread or (and which d'you reckon is more likely) they really, truly don't care.

Don't know why you see that because the ladders have been up-to-date for me both at home and work.

 

[fishman]

I think SLDAVEY from telstra has gone sulking into history. How many days is it since she posted?

 

[Sandola]

Don't know why you see that because the ladders have been up-to-date for me both at home and work.

Bet you're right. I thought it was weird because I remembered it being ok earlier this week (although NOTHING is truly surprising on the afl site anymore). Usually I'm on my work PC, today on the home one. I'll go do a hard refresh, and it will be up to date. Thanks for that. I suppose the afl.com people have enough problems at this point without the paranoid many of us finding fault where there is none.

 

[sldavey]

Almost up to 1000 posts in this thread.

I assume the discrepancy below happens all the time:

Hi Red+Black,

Yep, you are right ... it's not that the feeds are incorrect, it's just that they're feed from two different sources. We agree it's not optimal so from memory the Team agreed that to remove the scores in the dashboard on the right hand side and keep the InGameBar scores.

That's due next week (before the games start).

There's also a bit of thinking on the need for AFL international subscribers who want to watch video without seeing the scores going on as well.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[sldavey]

i think you may be a level above me on the technical side, i was just making a guess (and have very little idea what a http debug proxy would do for me - but thanks for the tip).

if it is one file and it is updating everything but not showing it until you change pages it is either a broke or that's the way it works. who wants to take a punt on which and what we can hope for first: a reasonable answer or a a fix?

sldavey - please explain.

Hi BestandFairest,

You are right and one of the devs replicated it. I know it's in for a minor fix ... I need to see/confirm when.

Cheers,
Sandy

 

[sldavey]

Hey Sandy, here's a pro-tip: Bigpond TV is turning away almost half of your audience

According to the latest W3C browser stats [ http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp ] 44% of internet users use a browser other than IE6/7, so why is Bigpond TV IE only? Quite frankly it's a disgrace for a company as large as Telstra/Bigpond to deny 44% of it's user base. It's not like this is the website for the Thai restaurant on the corner, this is Australia's largest Telco, a company that is constantly pushing broadband content and internet plans in advertising that costs millions of dollars.

We're talking about all the online videos for the AFL, NRL, Australian Idol and V8 Supercars. Instead of capitalising on all the money that Telstra has spent on the licenses for this much sought after content, they're turning people away.

Anyone not living a pastoral existence has heard about the surge in popularity of video online these days. You-Tube is mentioned in mainstream media daily, iTunes is selling TV-Shows, regular TV is under threat. Now is the time for Bigpond to capitalise on that, but to do so they need to actually let people watch their videos!

Bigpond was sold a lemon by Netventures, which is why we're stuck with the pile of festering crap that is Bigpond TV. Netventures seem like a great company, check out their awesome website: http://www.netventures.com.au/ It looks like it was created by a High-School Student.

Bigpond, take note of You-Tube, Google Video and any other online video merchant with half a clue. Flash Video is the way to go. 98% of users have flash [ http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/ ], and it works the same way on all OS's and browsers.

Hi

BigPond TV is a media player that my group (sport) is currently required to use. I don't have at my fingertips, the reason why this player is IE supported only. I'll need to find out.

I'm in two minds about the power of external media players vs the power of embedded players.

My personal prefernence is for embedded media. In the IA for the new version of AFL.com.au, we've allowed for an embedded experience should we wish to execute that.

Flash is also being looked at very closely.

However, there's quite a few complex requirements for streaming media particularly around real-time synchronisation of multiple data and video feeds (V8 Supercars) plus some complex DRM requirements required by the Rights Holders (horseracing, movies and music). I'm not leading that project but from memory, Flash is going to prove very difficult to use for real-time synchronisation of video and data files.

For history and FYI only ... WMP was selected in 2003 as the defacto media player because at that time, QuickTime and RealMedia were unable to meet the needs we had around real-time synchronisation. Flash wasn't even around then in the form it is today.

As for encoding, we have really strict standards that have been developed for companies uploading video onto our sport platform. Unfortunately I'm discovering "some" AFL video that's not living upto that standard. This is being sorted with the company that currently does some of the AFL video.

Have a look at Supercars video if you want ... we're currently live streaming at 2.5MB and encoding VODs around 1MB. If you're on ADSL2+ or cable, these encoding rates look amazing. Have a look at NRL video too.

Background: We encode at 180, 380, 600 and 1MB to cater for different customer needs (non BigPond and BigPond customer bandwidths).

As for NetVentures, they would have only built to whatever Telstra's requirements were for BigPond TV, so I think it's a bit unfair to be airing your frustrations over browser support on them.

Cheers,
Sandy