favo.tv

[favo]

heya,

www.favo.tv is online with a new design, not yet perfect but soon i hope

whats your impression?

somehow i think it doesnt fit to its contents ..

[tthurgo]

I like your design a lot. Looks professional and all. But why is the frontpage different from the sub pages? I'd stick to one if I were you.

On your "Countries" page, you have a "You are here ..." thing. I'd extend that throughout the site, so people know they are in Home >> Whatever >> This >> Here.

And I really like that search, very well done how it lets you sort by name, bandwidth, type and country. Although I don't like the wording on that one, I think by bandwidth, you mean quality and type, I would call media. But that's just my two Americanocents or whatever.

Tom

[favo]

I like your design a lot. Looks professional and all.

ty

But why is the frontpage different from the sub pages? I'd stick to one if I were you.

oh, well .. i wanted a coo startpage that catches the users eye .. and i love it

On your "Countries" page, you have a "You are here ..." thing. I'd extend that throughout the site, so people know they are in Home >> Whatever >> This >> Here.

yea, thats only found on the Station Page where you can browse thru the Areas by Textlistings .. its only thought for that one and i should remove it

I think by bandwidth, you mean quality and type, I would call media.

just renamed it .. its still the same wording in the station boxes .. i think when it will be the same, i need to explain that with some more words?

But that's just my two Americanocents or whatever.

yea, thx!

[favo]

uhm, what about the parts where you can watch a tv station? or the popups for radio stations?

[tthurgo]

The design is easy, and it's pretty simple to find what you want. I like how you integrated the TV screen in your page. The popup is cool too, although I would center that in the middle of the screen (which is possible with JS).

But like, I was trying to listen to/view some stations from Mexico and I got only errors, one said that it can't open the link (obviously they changed it or it expired), some other errors were that the license of the server had expired.
Not your fault, but maybe you should implement some error checking (crontabbed), that would sort out deadlinks and disable them.

Or even better, you let your users sort them out. A "Report error" link next to each entry.

Another thing, just eye candy. Sometimes it says "No description found", I'd just use a

& nbsp;

instead, or "N/A". Your message looks like an error, even though it (probably) means that there was no description added to the record. Looks more user friendly.
And another thing I noticed, when I choose a TV station and click the "pop out" link, it doesn't just popup, it reloads the entire page, and you get back to the countries page and I kind of lost my focus on where I were.

<a href="javascript:;" onclick="yourpopupcodehere">pop out</a>

I think that should solve the problem.

Tom

Edit: little html error

[favo]

But like, I was trying to listen to/view some stations from Mexico and I got only errors, one said that it can't open the link (obviously they changed it or it expired), some other errors were that the license of the server had expired.

hm, yea, i have a script to check some error codes but not all, need to redo it .. but the "Report Error Link" is something that would be good idea

Your message looks like an error

uhm, youre right, changed it to n/a

click the "pop out" link, it doesn't just popup, it reloads the entire page,

yep, cuz there is one problem when playing a stream with real-player .. it plays the current selected stream in ALL embeded objects of the site .. and when the users leaves the current tv on the page .. it will stop playing the stream in the popup too ... thats why i have started to do that .. and on media-player it will play the same one twice .. when i will send a stop to the object via javascript it will stop both streams (in popup and the site) on real-player and on media-player it will work

any ideas how to solve this problem?


the popup TV is now centered

[Till]

Hi favo!

Originally posted by favo


yep, cuz there is one problem when playing a stream with real-player .. it plays the current selected stream in ALL embeded objects of the site .. and when the users leaves the current tv on the page .. it will stop playing the stream in the popup too ... thats why i have started to do that .. and on media-player it will play the same one twice .. when i will send a stop to the object via javascript it will stop both streams (in popup and the site) on real-player and on media-player it will work

any ideas how to solve this problem?

If you use embed, you can assign a name:

<embed autostart="false" name="music" src="some.stream" width="300" height="200"></embed>
<a href="javascript:document.embeds['music'].play()">play</a>

Doing this, you should be able to start or stop the stream on the popup and the one on the site seperately. Whenever someone hits "play" or "stop", just what is requested, will be done.

Of course the both need to have different names.

This works in NS 3.0 and IE 5.0. But since you deal with streams and movies, fast net access and the latest software is not an issue here.

_till

[tthurgo]

Nice site favo! I bookmarked it!

Maybe add a little newsletter thing to keep people up to date without them having to check each day what's new. (I'm a bit lazy.. heh)

[favo]

Originally posted by tthurgo
Nice site favo! I bookmarked it!

Maybe add a little newsletter thing to keep people up to date without them having to check each day what's new. (I'm a bit lazy.. heh)

oh, thx!

newsletter, uhm, the only problem with a newsletter will be.. what should i tell ya? hehe .. always inform you about a new station that has been added?

[Till]

Originally posted by favo
newsletter, uhm, the only problem with a newsletter will be.. what should i tell ya?

It could be called The FaVo-sporadic, which would mean, you can send it whenever you want. For example, when you added new features to the site, you could send out monthly stats about the best station, where your visitors connected from or maybe a little media coverage of the latest developments in TV, HIFI and Radio in the "real world".

But then again, it's not really necessary.

_till

[favo]

yes, i could inform users 'bout new stations .. maybe the "Station of the Month" and most selected stations ever would be nice .. i'm currently thinking about what to send

a newsletter will bring people back to the page when they received one .. thats the best reason to get "lost registered users" back to favo.tv

[Mike Feury]

Hi Favo,

Some things to be aware of if you do a newsletter:

If you start by sending it out from your own email client, check with your ISP first - some of them will look askance at an email going to 20-100 people at once.
Better is a mailing list script on your website.

A number of big sites - like Yahoo etc - were thinking last year about blocking any incoming email sent bcc. So your subscribers from those sites' email accounts might never get your newsletter.

If you'll have anything which needs to line up - eg table of figures - make sure to use a monospace font like Courier New. The usual fonts will skew tables or columns.

Make sure to include a way for readers to subscribe and unsubscribe in each issue.

In your sign-up area, make very clear that you won't abuse [sell etc] subscribers' email addresses.

If you want max compatibility with old email clients, use a line width of around 60-65 characters - some old apps wrap at that. Also looks better IMO.

Use spaces rather than tabs for indents.

For the first few issues, send it to yourself only before to the list. There'll usually be something you forgot, until you get used to it

Plan carefully what your "From" address and Subject Line will be. These are your only means for getting your email actually opened - don't delude yourself that your subscribers will be eagerly waiting for your next issue

I used the well-known HTML and programming editor EditPlus for all my newsletters. It has great features to simplify the job.

[Till]

Does anyone have any detailed info on how HTML newsletters are accepted?

At work, we send plain text email all the time, and it works pretty well. But I like the advantage of adding some style to your newsletter through HTML mailings.

[Mike Feury]

Originally posted by Till
Does anyone have any detailed info on how HTML newsletters are accepted?

Hi Till,

I don't have any current info - I got out of the ezine game about 9 months ago. Main problem is likely to be subscribers from the portals - my text-only main ezine used to be regularly 'clipped' by AOL due to a file-size limit.

Some sites which used to be good re ezines:
Ezine University
Brian Alt's site
EzineZ
you might find the answer there