What we’ve been doing this week
Filed under: Development
Our aim to bring all programming information from various locations (US, UK, different providers and channels) and media (DVD, online, TV) into one simple hub that makes it relevant and up-to-date and searchable for each user, wherever they are and whatever they like, means that we spend most of this private beta time nailing the basics: getting the speed of the site, the coverage of the data and the functionality of the search as good as it can possibly be.
So: that’s what we’ve been doing. But as those of you regularly checking the Change log on the LocateTV site will know, we’re also constantly tweaking smaller details on the site, cosmetic as well as functional, in response to our testers’ feedback. Because however great the essential service is, it’s those little things that can really irritate you. And it’s those little things that are so difficult to spot until you have real people using LocateTV every day.
For example, Irish and UK search result were being marked as ‘BST’ (British Summer Time) - theoretically correct, but in practice people were quite rightly asking: why? Well, quite. So it’s gone. Another detail users were querying was the format of our episode details:
Some testers thought our abbreviations such as S1 EP8 to denote Series/Season 1, Episode 8 denoted some kind of Spanish channel! Anyone else find this confusing? Is there a format you’d prefer?
You may find this kind of detail mundane or fascinating… but it’s What We’ve Been Doing This Week (obviously, we’ve been doing lots of other stuff. We’re not that slow. But if this post is any longer you might lose the will to live).
Lottie
September 6th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Re. “S” and “EP” — at the very least, you could use the ABBR HTML element to markup these abbreviations (although I do believe that IE6 may have problems with this element). By specifying “series” and “episode” as each abbreviation’s title attribute, most browsers will make the full definitions available as a tooltip.
Alternatively, don’t use the abbreviations at all, and write out in full “Series 1, Episode 8″ …
September 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Thanks for the comment Scott. The HTML element’s a good option, and saves writing it out in full when space is at a premium.
September 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I’m happy with the S1 Ep8 thing, to be honest I find it self explanatory and a fairly universal abbreviation when I’ve seen it on other sites (as is S01e08). But if there is a labaour light, non cumbersome way of implementing a markup then I guess this would be good too