Freerepublic is superior, so why keep tweaking with it("beta")

duh | jilley

[Keith in Iowa]

It's a matter of bandwidth - as in $$$. Pony up the bucks, and I'm sure the Robinsons will leave it alone.

[Octar]

I trust John and Jim. I contribute too, and I eagerly look forward to whatever improvements they have planned for us. I haven't been disappointed yet.

[Cold Heat]

Since I have one of these slow poke modems, I find the beta format a improvement. I have not yet come to a conclusion though.

[ventana]

On behalf of all of us who do pony. I much prefer the existing style so far. It's as low bandwidth as I can imagine and still maintain effective branding (yes it's important), and usability. What is the issue with it? Is it too code heavy?

[EdZep]

John posted an explanatory thread about this earlier. Beta version threads suck up about 30% of the bandwidth of standard version threads.

Socialists in Congress? Click on the zeppelin, Grasshopper.

[hole_n_one]

Here's some cheese to go with that whine.....

[jilley]

Your point is valid and I guess it is possible to improve something already good. The two R's have not let me down yet, so I will hang in there no matter what.

[thatsnotnice]

I've evidently missed something too. I've seen the "beta" tags, and clicked them... Can't figure out what their purpose is yet.

Well, I guess I can, but they aren't real helpful. Rule #1: Make clickable tags useful. Oh well...

[jilley]

Thanks. That stuff looks good. Very funny too.

[A.J.Armitage]

I don't like the way the beta version threads look, because they look more primative than the ones using the current format. They do have a really cool new feature, which is that you can see all the replies to a particular comment.

[supercat]

What is the issue with it? Is it too code heavy?

Well, there are two bandwidth issues:

• If you look between posts, there's a lot of stuff. Here's what appeared between your post and the next one:

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  Quite a lot of stuff there. For a short comment like yours, there's more inter-post stuff than there is post.
• Under the old system, on long threads, people who wish to see any new replies will have to reload the whole thing. The new system gets around that, though I'm not too keen on the way things are broken up into 20-post groups. Still better than monolithic 700-post threads.

[isthisnickcool]

Is this your actual post or is this a test post? If it's a test post will you continue to improve it until it's the actual post and once it's the actual post then will it be superior to the prior posts? Because it's a really good post but some people might think it might be a better post while others think it's just fine.

I might add to this if I can see a way to add something that's better than what I just said unless I don't find a way to improve what I said then I won't add anything unless you think it would improve what I just said......

:)

[Revel]

I have already made some comments about this beta. But here is one more. The way the reply numbers are spread all over the page is crazy. I mean you have to look in the lower left corner of a post for some information and the in the upper right side for other information, and while your eyes are spinning sideways you have to figure out what it all means. On top of that you have to stare at an already hard to read text and try to figure who is posting to who and where one comment begins and the next one ends.

I will stick with the old for as long as I can. That is for sure. After that then I will just cut back on my reading.

[IncPen]

Now Jilley, once you master beta you can master anything...

I fully expect this post to get pulled....

[jungleboy]

Wow! I just beta tested this thread. It's a keeper, imho. (I'm hungry for some cheese, too)

[supercat]

They do have a really cool new feature, which is that you can see all the replies to a particular comment.

The old way allowed for that too. You just search for the string " To 7 " if you want all the replies to post #7. More convenient in many cases than having to go to a separate page to see if there are any replies.

While I understand the advantages of having the system only send out 20 messages at a time rather than an entire thread, there are times when the latter is much more handy. What I would think would be ideal would be if there were a way to download the entire thread the first time you visit, then on the next visit only download the new messages (with a back-link to the page containing all the earlier ones you visited). Not sure how to work that most efficiently, though.

[Octar]

Hang in there, jilley. I didn't mean to pick on you. I know what you meant.

[Styria]

There are places where Jim could cut out code while retaining the appearance and functionality of the current setup.

<A HREF="a3bc4a5471472.htm#1"> can drop the a3bc4a5471472.htm because it's refering to something in the same post.

<A STYLE="text-decoration: none" ... >. The purpose of style sheets is to not repeatedly set the format throughout the document. If he wants to have some links blue without an underline and others black with one, even using 'class="1"' would be fewer bytes. Or just use one style link and have even less.

The Top and Last links can be removed; I think we all have Home and End keys on our keyboards.

I'm sure others could find more.

[First_Salute]

The bandwidth problem is mostly because of duplicity.

If the FR search features worked well, posters could be much better informed of whether or not posts are already made.

Keep "Classic FreeRepublic" and scrap the "beta" ... in favor of spending time on improving the search features.