Carl Franklin

.NET Wonk

New DNR site preview

We're about to turn on a new website for DNR: http://www.dotnetrocks.com

I'd love to get some feedback. Does it work? Do you like it? IE? Netscape? Firefox? Dead links?

Let us know what you think.

Posted: Jan 28 2005, 06:12 AM by Carl Franklin | with 62 comment(s)
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Comments

Benjimawoo said:

Looks like a corker!

Although the link to the live feed doesn't seem to point anywhere.

And I get an intermittent Javascript error, (line 24. missing ')')

Otherwise, it all looks really good.
# January 28, 2005 6:34 AM

Carl Franklin said:

What were you doing when you got that error?
# January 28, 2005 6:37 AM

Benjimawoo said:

Just navigating to the homepage.

A refresh sorts it out, and it only seems to be the one page. But it does happen if you go there from anywhere (elsewhere on the site, fresh browser window, etc.)

Thought you'd like to know... Sorry about that.
# January 28, 2005 6:47 AM

Carl Franklin said:

It's not happening to me in IE or Firefox. What browser and version?
# January 28, 2005 6:52 AM

Benjimawoo said:

IE6, WinXP SP1

From the source, it looks lie a missng closing parenthesis in the 'popArchive' function.

But then I know fish about JavaScript.

But hey, if it's only happening to me, then fair enough.
# January 28, 2005 6:58 AM

Ian Dixon said:

same here on the javascpit using ie6 xp sp2

I had some problems sending email via the contact page. the mail goes but I don't think you got it (i had this problem before the site change)
# January 28, 2005 7:10 AM

Carl Franklin said:

yeah, that's because of the mail system, not you. I'm changing that so you won't get an autoreply from my spam filter.
# January 28, 2005 7:12 AM

Rory Becker said:

Very cool Site. Love the look

Its about time you snapped up www.dotnetrocks.com :)
# January 28, 2005 7:12 AM

Ian Dixon said:

forgot to say the site looks great
# January 28, 2005 7:16 AM

Rory Becker said:

One criticism.
The site doesn't resize very well left to right.

I tend to browse using either RSS Bandit(Aggregator) or with FireFox(Usually with a side bar for Rss). As such I have less horizontal space for displaying sites such as your own.

Most of the time this issue is down to very wide graphics at the top of the page.

One other thing.. (Remember you asked for it :)) I'm can't make up my mind if I like the background to the left menu. Might make difficult reading. Really not sure though.
# January 28, 2005 7:20 AM

Aaron Weiker said:

The site looks great. However since you asked for it I do have 1 complaint. I find it annoying in FireFox when someone goes and makes a nice menu and your cursor doesn't show the hand when you roll over it. All you have to do is change the style based upon mouse over. I noticed that you already doing some javascript to get your links to actually work so all you would have to do is set the style "cursor: pointer;" and then change it back to "cursor: default;" on mouse out.
# January 28, 2005 7:51 AM

Aaron Junod said:

I love the new look.. very nice. I'm getting the js error also, though. Poparchive missing a closed ). I'm on 2k3 server all released patches. I don't see the error in firefox on the same box, though.

Great new site :)
# January 28, 2005 8:01 AM

Aaron Junod said:

The code does render without the ) though even in firefox, just no explicit error. :
function popArchive(){
window.showModalDialog(
window.open('popArchive.aspx', 'dnrArchive', 'location=0, menubar=0, toolbar=0, status=0, width=510, height=300')
}
# January 28, 2005 8:02 AM

Tony Mara said:

Very nice job. I love the transcripts, so that now we can google the content. How do you do that? Do you use speech recognition software or do you have a monkey doing the typing?
# January 28, 2005 8:03 AM

Denny said:

Looks Nice, clean, professional....

I do see a few things.... I will try to check more later but with XP Pro SP2 IE 6.xx

the "download" box is overlaping the "last show" box at the top of the page.

was that intended?? if so it looks like an error as no other boxes overlap that way...
# January 28, 2005 8:18 AM

Page Brooks said:

The new DNR site looks GREAT! It is so much more user friendly now! Keep up the good work!
# January 28, 2005 8:19 AM

PS said:

Very cool.
The tos.htm is missing.

Unless Rory has left Microsoft and gone back to being an indepenant contractor, maybe he should update his profile.

There is something wrong with the sponsorship page.... the prices are way too low. :)

I agree that the image behind the left nav makes it a little hard to read.

Is Franklins.net going to get a facelift also?

Paul
# January 28, 2005 8:21 AM

Ian Dixon said:

So Carl does that mean you didn't get my email about suggestions topics on dotnetshows, you replyed but didn't read the mail

cheers

Ian
# January 28, 2005 8:23 AM

darren said:

The images on the left menu act as camouflage making reading the menu items harder.
# January 28, 2005 8:45 AM

Benjimawoo said:

It may be a little off-topic, but are you and Rory in <em>soft focus</em> in the top right corner? Are you giving the site more of a romantic den of lurve, Barry White kind of feeling?

Cool.
# January 28, 2005 10:19 AM

Brian Kuhn said:

General:
a. I like the new look and feel of the site. Nice.
b. Offering the show transcripts is great!
c. Overall, very good, I definitely think it is easier to find content and be notified about upcoming shows. Good work.

Problems I Had:

1. Javascript error (missing a paren...)
function popArchive()
{
window.showModalDialog(window.open('popArchive.aspx', 'dnrArchive', 'location=0, menubar=0, toolbar=0, status=0, width=510, height=300')
}

2. Search on show archives does no allow reset to full list after you have filtered.

3. Search does not always work. (Try searching for Rory). Not sure what content you are searching against. Title? All meta-data? Maybe an advanced search option should be available?

4. Why are you explicitly requiring BitTorrent on the PodCasts? The PodCast feed is just XML with <enclosure> tags. Can't we leave it up to the consumer of the feed to handle how they want to pull the content? I must be missing something...
# January 28, 2005 10:23 AM

John Barone said:

I like the new look over the old one, most definately...

Two things I found (using IE w/XP SP2.

1. As somebody else mentioned, the "Download the Show" box intrudes into the speaker's bio box. Perhaps that's the look you indend, but if you look at the bio for Robert Hurlbut, you will see that the Download box intrudes upon the bio text itself (not just whitespace).

2. I don't see any "Links from the Show" for any of the shows. The title is there, but alas, no links.
# January 28, 2005 10:25 AM

Paul Speranza said:

Looks nice.

I agree with Jogn Barone about the Download Show box - what show? Its not clear and to me it appears disjointed.
# January 28, 2005 10:27 AM

PS said:

Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth... which is the reason for BitTorrent and why lots of people are seriously looking at it as an alternative to downloading straight MP3 files.
# January 28, 2005 10:28 AM

Sahil Malik said:

FINALLY !!! YOU HAVE A SITE THAT ..

That doesn't look like a high school kid made it !!

It's awesome name .. my only complaint is .. why not sooner?

I think your listenership will rise due to this.
# January 28, 2005 10:30 AM

Brian Kuhn said:

PS,

Obviously bandwidth is an issue, as we all felt this week trying to get shows, but pod casting/byte casting is just based on RSS and <enclosure> tags. If someone comes up with a new and better way, how does being locked into BitTorrent help? I love BitTorrent but like to keep my options open.
# January 28, 2005 10:32 AM

Kyle Davis said:

Very nice. Previously mentioned (and simple to fix) javascript errors aside, I like the new design.

Regarding that javascript error... it's attempting to do a popup window. Why be annoying? The content you're trying to pop looks like it's designed to sit on the main page anyway...
# January 28, 2005 10:57 AM

Andy the high school kid said:

Sahil,

My name is Andy and I am currently a 10th grader at Richland High School. I worked really hard making the DNR site and don't appreciate the criticism. All of my friends really liked the green and yellow.

Just remember you too were once in high school. We have feelings too.

# January 28, 2005 11:19 AM

blameMike said:

Carl,

The new layout looks tight. I like it, a lot... a lot.
# January 28, 2005 11:28 AM

Carl Franklin said:

Brian,

If another option comes up that's as good as or better than BT, we'll implement that. But as it stands now, the mp3 podcasting clients are killing us on Mondays. It's spiking to 30 Megabits, and we don't have that kind of money. So, podcasting with mp3s does not scale. It's flawed, and I think we're taking a bold step in at least conditioning our listeners to get real when it comes to podcasting.
# January 28, 2005 12:41 PM

Carl Franklin said:

OK, I fixed the javascript thing. Thanks for that one!
# January 28, 2005 12:46 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> I love the transcripts, so that now we can google the content. How do you do that? <

Pwop now has an audio transcription service: http://www.pwop.com/transcriptions.aspx

:-)
# January 28, 2005 12:50 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> I find it annoying in FireFox when someone goes and makes a nice menu and your cursor doesn't show the hand when you roll over it. <

Great suggestion. I'll check that one out.
# January 28, 2005 12:52 PM

Ian Dixon said:

Carl
about the email for dotnetrocks, should I resend it?

BTW Bt feed works fine stick to your guns on that
# January 28, 2005 12:55 PM

Carl Franklin said:

Ian, I got your request for a movie, but I can't find your email with suggestions. Go ahead and resend it
# January 28, 2005 1:20 PM

Carl Franklin said:

I updated the navigator images to be a bit more readable. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions as to how we can use that microphohe (or any other branded image) in the navigator and still be readable?
# January 28, 2005 1:33 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> the "download" box is overlaping the "last show" box at the top of the page. <

Intended
# January 28, 2005 1:37 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> Is Franklins.net going to get a facelift also? <

Yep
# January 28, 2005 1:38 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> 3. Search does not always work. (Try searching for Rory). Not sure what content you are searching against. Title? All meta-data? Maybe an advanced search option should be available? <

Yeah, I see that. It's also returning more than one page full of items.
# January 28, 2005 1:42 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> As somebody else mentioned, the "Download the Show" box intrudes into the speaker's bio box. Perhaps that's the look you indend, but if you look at the bio for Robert Hurlbut, you will see that the Download box intrudes upon the bio text itself (not just whitespace). <

I don't see that. I see his text wrapping around the download box in both Firefox and IE
# January 28, 2005 1:44 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> Obviously bandwidth is an issue, as we all felt this week trying to get shows, but pod casting/byte casting is just based on RSS and <enclosure> tags. If someone comes up with a new and better way, how does being locked into BitTorrent help? I love BitTorrent but like to keep my options open <

OK, I see what you're asking now. We're using both podcasting and bittorrent. IOW, our enclosure tags will point to a .torrent file. You can still come to the site and download whatever format you want, but if you want to subscribe to a podcast, you'll have to have a bt client.

Maybe that's not clear from the text I have there. I'll make up a new page explaining this with a link to the movie.
# January 28, 2005 1:49 PM

Don Kiely said:

Hey Carl,

Site seems to work fine in Firefox. But the Bittorrent feed isn't working. The http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks_torrent.xml isn't working; the RSS Importer plugin for Azureus reports Connection Refused. And clicking on the Bittorrent link on the home page for the Carl and Rory Catch Up show downloads the torrent file, but the connection is again refused.

Don
# January 28, 2005 1:52 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> the Bittorrent feed isn't working <

My bad. Try now.
# January 28, 2005 1:59 PM

Sahil Malik said:

Andy thats funny man !!
# January 28, 2005 2:33 PM

Afshin said:

Carl:

Love the site and love the outlook look-a-like title bars. All Mondays, DNR and Pwop web sites, all look very cool. A little comment about some little things that I noticed.

DNR:
1. Coming Up Section – If I am reading this correctly, there won’t be a DNR show this weekend and the next show is on 2/4/2005. If that is correct, then the coming up section is working properly otherwise 1/28/05 show information is missing.
2. Listen Live Section – When I click on “click here to listen live…” hyperlink, I get routed to a “Page cannot be display” (http://radio1.franklins.net/dnr) page.
3. Listen Live Section – There is a link for: “You can call in questions during the show!” and this routes you to http://www.franklins.net/calldotnetrocks/ which still has old site’s skin.
4. Carl and Rory Catch Up Section– The bio snippet has Rory as an independent consultant which I think is a little out of date.
Mondays:
1. What is Mondays Section – This snippet refers to DNR which still points you back to http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks/">http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks/ which has the old DNR skin.
Pwop:
1. .NET Rocks button – This button takes you to a blurb that describes DNR with appropriate links back to DNR.
2. What is .NET Rocks – Hyperlinks embedded in this snippet takes you back to http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks/">http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks/ which has the old DNR skin instead of the new one.
3. Mondays button – This button takes you back to the Mondays web site instead of behaving the same way as DNR button, meaning giving you some blurb with appropriate links to Mondays show.

Just quick observations.

As always, thank you so much for putting these shows together and making learning fun!

Afshin
# January 28, 2005 3:07 PM

Don Kiely said:

The bittorrent for the new show works. Thanks!

But the RSS feed, http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks_torrent.xml, still has Rob Barker's show as the last entry. Is that still the right URL for the feed? It looks like the new site uses http://www.dotnetrocks.com/DotNetRocks_FullMP3.xml instead. Is that the final?
# January 28, 2005 3:17 PM

Carl Franklin said:

Uh, no. That's a mistake. We are going forward with torrents.
# January 28, 2005 3:30 PM

Carl Franklin said:

Ashfin:

> 1. Coming Up Section – If I am reading this correctly, there won’t be a DNR show this weekend and the next show is on 2/4/2005. If that is correct, then the coming up section is working properly otherwise 1/28/05 show information is missing. <

Fixed.

> 2. Listen Live Section – When I click on “click here to listen live…” hyperlink, I get routed to a “Page cannot be display” (http://radio1.franklins.net/dnr) page. <

Yeah, that's not good. It is a link to the live stream, which is only active during the show. It shouldn't error out like that. Thanks.

> 3. Listen Live Section – There is a link for: “You can call in questions during the show!” and this routes you to http://www.franklins.net/calldotnetrocks/ which still has old site’s skin. <

Yep. On my list.

> 4. Carl and Rory Catch Up Section– The bio snippet has Rory as an independent consultant which I think is a little out of date. <

Yes. He has to update his bio.

> Mondays: ... <

This site is still under construction even though its public. We get much less traffic so it's not a priority. However, we're putting up a new version tonight that will fix these problems, and look much better as well.

> Pwop:
1. .NET Rocks button – This button takes you to a blurb that describes DNR with appropriate links back to DNR. <

Yes. Once we move the site over, the link will go to www.dotnetrocks.com

> 2. What is .NET Rocks – Hyperlinks embedded in this snippet takes you back to http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks/">http://www.franklins.net/dotnetrocks/ which has the old DNR skin instead of the new one. <

See above. Noted.

> 3. Mondays button – This button takes you back to the Mondays web site instead of behaving the same way as DNR button, meaning giving you some blurb with appropriate links to Mondays show. <

Good point. We need to flesh these out a bit on Pwop.

Thanks for your detailed analysis! This was great!
# January 28, 2005 3:36 PM

Sahil Malik said:

BTW, the new mondays and pwop sites rock too !!
# January 28, 2005 4:10 PM

Domagoj Kovač said:

Finally, DNR got its own domain :) Anyway, only one thing - when browsing through franklins.net, I discovered some nice stuff on your website that I would otherwise missed. Like .NET utils, etc.
# January 28, 2005 5:05 PM

Carl Franklin said:

Yeah, we're going to redo franklins.net too.
# January 28, 2005 5:08 PM

dank said:

Sweet new site, looks nice Carl et al.!!!
# January 28, 2005 5:42 PM

Bill Oddie said:

Wow the site looks great. :-)
# January 28, 2005 5:45 PM

TrackBack said:

# January 28, 2005 5:53 PM

Randy Glenn said:

Looks good in Safari. Any chance of getting a BT Podcasting feed for the AAC version?
# January 29, 2005 7:55 PM

Carl Franklin said:

All of our podcast feeds are going to be torrent files starting this week.
# January 29, 2005 8:04 PM

James Mahoney said:

The menus down the left don't work for me - radM1 is null or not an object... (Ie6, xp sp2)

It'd be nice if the text size took account of my text size settings so I don't have to strain my eyes so much.

Other than that, it looks nice.
# January 30, 2005 3:21 PM

Carl Franklin said:

> Any chance of getting a BT Podcasting feed for the AAC version?

Done
# January 30, 2005 9:08 PM

John Saunders said:

Looks great to me in FireFox and IE. I'm glad too, the current site didn't do justice for you guys.
# January 30, 2005 10:51 PM

Rob Bazinet said:

Great site Carl. I love the new changes and the fact you have a list of the upcoming guests is a nice touch on the front page.

The bandwith problems are a killer though, I hope they get fixed soon. Even if they were just plan slow it would be OK but the fact the connection gets dropped is a real pain.

# January 31, 2005 10:44 AM

Leigh Kendall said:

Like the changes! However, the only two "complaints" that come to mind are that I think the old site was easier in finding past shows; no need to click through pages. Also, how 'bout stretching the layout to fit the whole screen?

Other than that, it looks MUCH more professional.
# February 2, 2005 8:06 AM

Leigh Kendall said:

You might want to consider a new blog too. .TEXT is slow and seems prone to throwing errors it seems.
# February 2, 2005 8:08 AM
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