The Channel 9 beta has been updated

Posted By: Duncan Mackenzie | Sep 29th, 2007 @ 2:42 AM | 171,174 Views | 35 Comments
Hey folks, it has been awhile since we first published the Channel 9 beta site and we thought you might be wondering where we are with the whole 'new Channel 9' project. Well, we have been moving forward on many different areas of the code and we even shipped a new production site (http://Channel8.msdn.com) built on the exact same code base. All of the work done since we last updated the beta site is hard to describe in a few lines of text, but let me give it a shot anyway Smiley

First and foremost, we have added the idea of 'managed tag pages'. These pages take the idea of filtering content by a certain tag and then add in the concept of an 'editor' for that tag's area. The editor will be your guide to the topic in question, selecting content from Channel 9 to feature on the page, blogs that should be included and more. We haven't fully configured it, but you can see an example of what I mean on the Silverlight tag page, where Adam Kinney is designated as the ownere of that page. You still get your straight filtered list of videos (right in the what's new area) but you can also see recommended or featured content along the upper right. We have more planned for the managed tag pages, but for now I hope this gives you an idea of what is to come in that area.

The other major change is around the style of the site. In addition to a ton of minor changes, (many of which were as a direct result of feedback from you Niners), the site was made much more consistent overall. The fonts, HTML tags and information displayed have been standardized around the site; an entry displayed in the sidebar on one page should look exactly like another... this has the benefit of a better experience for you, and it also really simplifies our code, which is a great help for when we need to make ongoing changes or even launch a new site based off the same code.

Finally, we heard your comments around the new AJAX asynchronously loading of posts, threads and comments, and we acted on some of that feedback in this update. Your back button should work now, even when all you are doing is paging through the videos on the media page or all the comments on the current post. If you watch the address bar you'll also see that the page number is part of the URL, and that it is being updated as you page back and forth. With those URLs you'll be able to link someone right into a specific page in a discussion, as requested by your feedback on the first Beta site we shipped. The AJAX features have a bunch of other improvements added to them as well, including a 'throbber' animation to let you know when we are loading data and other less obvious changes.

Check it out over at http://beta.channel9.msdn.com and let us know what you think in the beta forum here on C9.

About the video: This was made today by Erik (HumanCompiler here on C9) and Sampy, shortly after we shipped this update... and was, as many of you already know, inspired by the recent set of Halo 3 videos Smiley  
Tag: EvNet
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#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 10:42 AM
eagle
eagle
Ooops!

I still can't sign-in..... 
#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 11:20 AM
figuerres
figuerres
???
BRAVO!!

I know I can be harsh at times, I know how hard developing is...

first impression right now is "Good Job Guys!"

one thing though is the Live / Passport login is still not there yet I see.

but the page load / with the throbber is MUCH better.

generaly looks much nicer.

Now if we can get some weekly / bi-weekly updates till it's done.

Big Smile

#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 11:29 AM
littleguru
littleguru
<3 Seattle
The new version is a lot better Smiley The forums need still some improvements but that will come, I'm sure. It looks nicer than the first beta!
#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 11:35 AM
GoddersUK
GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!
Loving the video! Big Smile
#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 2:15 PM
dentaku
dentaku
It looks nice and I like the Silverlight video player. The brown is a bit pink but I guess the only alternative is to make it more orange or more green and greenish brown is ugly unless you're going for a military look like the Steam interface.

If you go into a  forum you can't see as many posts as you used to in one window because each line in the list takes up way more space now. (does that make sense?)
They're packed together more closely in the old forums but it's not crowded so I can't see why stuff is spaced out so far in the beta forums.
#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 7:27 PM
JR
JR
That was a great video, I was cracking up.....Tongue Out
#Sep 29th, 2007 @ 9:51 PM
biaachmonkie
biaachmonkie
The audio is messed up for me in the embeded silverlight player, Silverlight Version: 1.0.20816.0. Its blown out and all staticy, as if the valume was cranked way up and the speakers where blown out. And the audio slider has no effect unless its all the way off.

The wmv stream sounds fine though. This is with XP in Firefox & IE6. Using the integrated audio on my nForce mainboard, and audio is fine in everything else.

Any ideas whats wrong with silverlight?
#Sep 30th, 2007 @ 7:20 AM
yman
yman
The video looks like one of those creative obscure ads for perfume Tongue Out You know, the ones where you have no idea what it's about until the last moment - "XXX by XYZ".
#Sep 30th, 2007 @ 12:44 PM
HumanCompiler
HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code
To give credit when it's due, the idea for the video was Sampy's and Sampy's alone.  He's really good with this stuff.  Did anyone notice the reference to C10 and C8?

eagle wrote:


I still can't sign-in..... 


For anyone who can't sign in still please send mail to ch9@microsoft.com

figuerres wrote:
BRAVO!!

I know I can be harsh at times, I know how hard developing is...

first impression right now is "Good Job Guys!"

one thing though is the Live / Passport login is still not there yet I see.

but the page load / with the throbber is MUCH better.

generaly looks much nicer.

Now if we can get some weekly / bi-weekly updates till it's done.





Thanks, figuerres!  We're glad you like what you're seeing.

Windows Live ID support didn't make it into this sprint.  It'll get in there eventually for sure.

We will definitely be updating you more on the beta now.  What we'd like to do in all our future sprints until C9v4 is done, is do at least one update to the beta every sprint.  We may mostly focus on whatever other things we need to do, but want to show progress on C9v4 every sprint if possible.

dentaku wrote:

If you go into a  forum you can't see as many posts as you used to in one window because each line in the list takes up way more space now. (does that make sense?)
They're packed together more closely in the old forums but it's not crowded so I can't see why stuff is spaced out so far in the beta forums.


Are you looking at the site in IE?  I currently have some CSS problems in IE that are making rows much taller than they're supposed to be.  If you look at the site in Firefox or Opera (possibly even Safari) you should see the rows aren't as tall.  That said, the rows are going to be a bit taller than in the current site because of us making our templates consistent across the site (the posted by always being under the title that's always the same colors, etc).

biaachmonkie wrote:
The audio is messed up for me in the embeded silverlight player, Silverlight Version: 1.0.20816.0. Its blown out and all staticy, as if the valume was cranked way up and the speakers where blown out. And the audio slider has no effect unless its all the way off.

The wmv stream sounds fine though. This is with XP in Firefox & IE6. Using the integrated audio on my nForce mainboard, and audio is fine in everything else.

Any ideas whats wrong with silverlight?


Your situation sounds specific to your machine, but I don't know what it would be.  Did you install a lot of the alphas and betas of Silverlight?  I've heard of people having problems with it then.  Try uninstalling any version of Silverlight you have on your machine and reinstalling Silverlight 1.0 and let us know if it still doesn't work for you.

yman wrote:
The video looks like one of those creative obscure ads for perfume  You know, the ones where you have no idea what it's about until the last moment - "XXX by XYZ".


That's exactly the point (of ours and the original Halo 3 commercial).  Good to know we pulled it off.  Wink
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