h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I periodically pop into the new skin to check on progress, but as I still have to reload a lot it is still quite frustrating. I will keep checking though. It's not a lot different to use than the old ones.

A simple change of the skin name in the URL to change the skin does the trick. ie http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel

Though the new site has its own way of doing things, so it's not a straight swap between numbered pages:

Barlesque - http://www.bbc.co.uk/user/U42
DNA - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/U42

The official way into the new system is:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2

You can also use Jim Lynn's special route:

http://www.h2g2.com

But if everybody moves to the new system today it will crash, as it does not seem to be capable of taking any sort of heavy load yet.

>But if everybody moves to the new system today it will crash, as it does not seem to be capable of taking any sort of heavy load yet.<

What on earth is the point? We've been told about this new thing for months. And its an utter joke.

It simply *DOESN'T WORK'. I don't understand why people aren't fronting up and admitting that...and it never will. We were told 'Good News Everyone'.

I'm sticking to Brunel until BBCh2g2 finally fizzles out.

Of course it will work. But it's obviously still in Beta.

So all the bug reports that have been noted and the techs are working aren't admitting that something is wrong?

Yes, the launch has found a lot of problems. They are working on them. What's wrong with that? There is no test that can replicate going 'live'.

The old URL's worked with a skin change ie for Plain http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/U42
Why couldn't they just have gone http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/barlesque//U42 to develop a new front page ?

I guess the simple answer is that Barlesque isn't just a new skin, it's an entirely different website that they have attempted to make work the same way as dna.

Happy to stand corrected though.

Yes, I believe you're right, Vip.

I've spotted lots of bugs, but they all look easy to fix, and in fact quite a few of them have been fixed already.

I really want to switch to the new skin, but the biggest problem is I do get a lot of 404 errors, almost every time I open a link. I worry that this makes our site look unstable, at a time when we have to be fully painted in magnolia, clean and tidy for potential buyers to look around.

Agreed, Zen. Potential buyers tend not to see small flaws when looking round a place, but will definitely notice if the room disappears.

If we do take over the site, can we use that as an excuse to roll back to "proper" skins and lose all the "Barlesque" bloat?

There's little or nothing in the "new look" that we can't replicate under the old system. All that having "Barlesque" does for us is to make the site meet internal BBC standards (not important now) and makes the pages *much* bigger and slower to load.

For example, every page that is "Barlesque compliant" has a single line of CSS grafted on to the top that's about 45.7kB in size, just setting every conceivable CSS default, then this is followed by about a third of that size in "site specific" CSS changing loads of those values to what the page *actually* requires. It's a mess.

The big Barlesque CSS line is larger than some entire pages were in pre-Barlesque hootoo, and for people browsing the site on mobile devices who pay per kB of transfer it's just costing them money.

I agree that if we are no longer going to be owned by the BBC, the new owner will likely not want us to *look* like part of the BBC.

However, that is something that the BBC and the new owner will have to negotiate. At the moment, it is most important that Barlesque continues to be improved so that it works and showcases us in the nest possible light.

Out of the older skins, I think the one that has dated the least is actually Goo, although I expect it no longer stands up to Accessibility standards (2legs and Mala would know).
Alabaster and Brunel each have their positives but in terms of pure look, they do look dated. Plain is *too* plain and was never supported anyway (even though I love it ).

In the long run, we will probably need a new look. What that look will be will probably be dictated by the direction the non-h2g2 takes.

It was the BBC themselves who stifled the development of new skins. Before they took over we were told there would eventually be dozens of skin choices, possibly with a "skin kit" that allowed us to customise it to suit ourselves. (I use "Plain" skin with a custom stylesheet, so I'm already halfway there...)

The point of skinability is that we can give people the choice of what *they* find comfortable to look at and convenient to use, not just the one compromise that some "accessibility consultant" has come up with.

That's all well and good Vip, as long as they don't bu%gg$r up the old site.
ie. Posting on the new site already gives the *apostrophe* corruption.

Oh yes, I remember a couple of people discussing that a long time ago. That would be great. The point of a skin is that is that itshould be able to stretch over any structure. If the new structure is built with that in mind it could definitely be possible.
When we&#39;ve had new skins in the past they&#39;ve actually changed the way the site worked (well, certainly Brunel did). If the idea to have customisable skins was a concept from the very beginning this wouldn&#39;t be the case. It would all work the same, just look different.

-fairy-

Vip - Your previous post no 358 was made on the new system. The use of the apostropthe has corrupted it on my brunel page. Take a look :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F77636?thread=8018187&latest=1#p105680525

Psst... Ancient Brit... we all know about the apostrophe issue... Just be thankful there are no greengrocers on the new site, it'd be horrendous!