The Channel 9 beta has been updated...

Posted By: Duncan Mackenzie | May 15th, 2008 @ 1:30 PM | 6,329 Views | 105 Comments

I know you've heard it before, but we are heading down the final path to ship.... really we are Smiley

As part of that path, we've been working hard for the past few months focused on making sure that our new code base meets the expectations of you folk, the Niners. What has that meant? Well, it meant new features of course, but it also meant extending some of our existing code to make it more enjoyable for how people use Channel 9... even modifying our initial ideas around the UI and the UX to make it both an improvement and familiar.

That is probably already enough talk for most people, so for all of those folks ... please feel free to jump over to the beta (http://beta.channel9.msdn.com), check it out, and provide feedback.

I do want to explain what is new/improved, what is missing and what are known beta issues that we are planning to fix in the short term. We'll go through these features/differences in an upcoming dev diary, but for now here it is in basic text form.

What's New/Improved

Browser/Standards compatibility

  • Nearly identical experience across IE and FF and the site is very usable in Opera and Safari
  • Font scaling (make your text size larger/smaller in your browser and the site stays usable and looking good) is now possible

Videos

  • Support for multiple video and audio formats (MP4, Zune formatted WMV, High Quality WMV, Regular WMV, WMA and MP3) with corresponding RSS feeds for use with aggregators including Zune and iTunes
  • Silverlight Player with an available iFrame for inclusion in other web sites
  • The ability to tell people about your favorite videos using a direct post to Facebook, Digg or Deli.cio.us link

Forums/Commenting

  • Asynchronous (AJAX) paging through comments on videos, threads in the forums and more
  • New "Reply To" model that automatically displays the comment you are replying to hooked up to your comment
  • New Editor with broad browser support

User Submitted content (wiki/sandbox)

  • Added commenting to wiki pages
  • Async history browsing and editing
  • New syntax matching codeplex's wiki syntax
  • Tagging support added to the Sandbox, so that uploaded samples can be categorized (think C#, Web, WPF)

What's Missing/Coming Soon

  • "Recent Changes" pages/feeds in the wiki are no longer available (will return)
  • "Compare with previous" no longer available (will return)
  • IE 6 support has issues, mostly around our extensive use of transparent PNGs Smiley
  • Profiles are really lacking compared to how they are in the current C9 (some improvements planned, will plan more based on your feedback!).
  • Watched Threads is gone.
  • User info (blog, web site, caption) on posts is gone, but will come back later in some form of quick info pop-up.
  • No Emoticons in the editor (coming soon)
  • No Poll
  • No Quote option for replying

Note: The beta itself is missing some things just because it is a beta, including Live ID sign-in... and our data isn't anywhere near up-to-date between the live and beta sites.

I'm sure there is more, but please check it out now and let us know what you think. There is a feedback forum (http://beta.channel9.msdn.com/forums/feedback) on the new site, but I've also created a page for the beta on uservoice.com, you can check it out here http://channel9.uservoice.com and you can use that site to submit comments, ideas, and to vote on other people's feedback.
Rating:
1
0
#May 29th, 2008 @ 10:37 PM
HumanCompiler
HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code
PaoloM wrote:
One more thing to fit in the schedule!

It's not obvious how you go to the last post of a thread. If you click on the username, you get rightly whisked to the user's page, so maybe hyperlinking "Last:" with an anchor to the last post?


We don't have a "last" link anymore.  That's why it's not obvious.  Smiley  We ended up not having time to implement it before launch (but it will come soon after probably), but we're going to do something more useful, which is to automatically take you to the last unread post when you enter a thread (with no page parameter specified).  "last" doesn't always get you where you need to go, just on the right page.  We can do better (and will soon).  Smiley
#May 30th, 2008 @ 1:14 AM
stevo_
stevo_
Human after all
HumanCompiler wrote:
Bas, true...sorry about that.  We just fixed (today) some more interesting problems with passwords and resetting them.  When was the last time you tried to reset your password?


Sums up the vision of MS when it comes to the web, your mighty interested in it, but aren't following any of the passion that generic web developers have..

Adding a noscript tag to at least tell the user whats going on isn't a big deal..

If your adding experience that utterly required js, then you shouldn't leave the non-js people in the dark.

I would actually agree that adding features shouldn't be done unless their needed.. but adding a noscript tag is a 30 second job, to say 'yea- we thought about you guys.'..
#May 30th, 2008 @ 2:31 AM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
HumanCompiler wrote:
Bas, true...sorry about that.  We just fixed (today) some more interesting problems with passwords and resetting them.  When was the last time you tried to reset your password?


Yesterday afternoon. I'm gonna give it a go right now...

...hmm, it now says that my new password has been sent, but I have yet to see it appear in my inbox. I hope I used the same e-mail address to register my account that I use for my Live ID, otherwise I have no idea which one to use. Maybe it'll arrive later on.

(Edit: hmm, looks like it just tells you that the password has been sent regardless of what you enter in the e-mail address box.)


Minor nitpick though: The "Your new password has been sent" message could be a bit clearer. Right now it's the same text you got before clicking the button, just with the "Your new password has been sent" message tacked on. It's not immediately clear that something has actually happened.

stevo_ wrote:

HumanCompiler wrote: Bas, true...sorry about that.  We just fixed (today) some more interesting problems with passwords and resetting them.  When was the last time you tried to reset your password?


Sums up the vision of MS when it comes to the web, your mighty interested in it, but aren't following any of the passion that generic web developers have..

Adding a noscript tag to at least tell the user whats going on isn't a big deal..

If your adding experience that utterly required js, then you shouldn't leave the non-js people in the dark.

I would actually agree that adding features shouldn't be done unless their needed.. but adding a noscript tag is a 30 second job, to say 'yea- we thought about you guys.'..


I guess you have a point about the non-js experience, but what does that have to do with password resets?
#May 30th, 2008 @ 3:10 AM
HumanCompiler
HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code
stevo_ wrote:

HumanCompiler wrote: Bas, true...sorry about that.  We just fixed (today) some more interesting problems with passwords and resetting them.  When was the last time you tried to reset your password?


Sums up the vision of MS when it comes to the web, your mighty interested in it, but aren't following any of the passion that generic web developers have..

Adding a noscript tag to at least tell the user whats going on isn't a big deal..

If your adding experience that utterly required js, then you shouldn't leave the non-js people in the dark.

I would actually agree that adding features shouldn't be done unless their needed.. but adding a noscript tag is a 30 second job, to say 'yea- we thought about you guys.'..


You shouldn't over-generalize.  We're a big company.  We're a very small team and have limited time.  Our focus is on the best experience for the most amount of people for the least amount of development time.  We'll continue to work on the no javascript experience, but our only priority there is for search engines.  We don't get a whole lot of users to our sites that don't run a javascript-capable browser.  As usual, I'm missing what the big deal is here.
#May 30th, 2008 @ 3:11 AM
HumanCompiler
HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code
Bas, I'm not sure our background services are turned on right now and that's what sends out the e-mails.  We'll get back to you tomorrow.
#May 30th, 2008 @ 3:16 AM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
HumanCompiler wrote:
Bas, I'm not sure our background services are turned on right now and that's what sends out the e-mails.  We'll get back to you tomorrow.


Cool, thanks for the update.
Microsoft Communities