Now Playing on MCR

[Phillip]

Over the next few days I’m going to be adding some graphics to the forum in several places which will show what song is currently playing on Muppet Central Radio with a direct link to listen to the station.

If you have any questions or comments about these additions, please post them here. We want to promote that station more on the forum and we want to test this feature to see how it impacts our listening numbers.

 

[Fragglemuppet]

It sounds like a great idea, and will make tuning in much easier!
I actually do listen often, but since I don't use either MC or Live365 to do it, and instead get in through Itunes, I don't know if it affects the TLH.

 

[Muppet Loverr]

Really good idea

 

[Phillip]

Ok, this will be rolling out in the next few minutes, right now you'll be able to see the new code on the showthread and forumdisplay pages. This may expand to a few other places as we go along.

 

[maniacal muppet]

Wow, these are great

 

[The Count]

Hey Phil... Sorry to say, but I have a grievance with the new Now Playing graphics for MC Radio. The graphics listing what song is currently playing appear at the top of a thread's page, just before the first post, and that's cool cause I can check out what song is currently playing without having to go to my Live 365 account and log in to MC Radio.
But the problem I'm having, and I'd be curious to know if Fragglemuppet has the same problem, is it's interfering with my screenreader program. Let me explain. Let's say I'm on Post #1 of a thread, reading the information in said post/thread. When the MC Radio Now Playing listing/graphics refresh on their own, the whole page refreshes and I'm sent back to the top of the page. This means I have to try to get back to the post and reread what I had already read of said post, sometimes in mid-sentence. While it's not that big a deal on say Posts #1-5 in any thread, the annoyance factor of being sent to the top of the page and having to swim against the current to get back to a post much farther along on a thread's page of posts grows considerably the higher the post number within a particular thread.

Is there anyway of solving this, to have the Now Playing listing/graphics refresh but not affect my screenreader program's place on the page at the same time? If it helps, I've noticed that this function doesn't kick in when I'm replying to posts, but I'm not sure if that'd be a viable solution for me to be able to read posts given the problem described above.

Hope to hear from you soon with possible answers, have a good day.

 

[Phillip]

Ed,

Thanks for the input. We could increase the refresh time (which would make the results less accurate) or possibly even eliminate the refresh all together. Let me think about our options and give others a chance to chime in too.

In actuality, the whole page doesn't refresh only the MC Radio iframe code does, but it sounds like if anything on the page changes, then the screen reader just starts from the beginning anyway. Maybe there's a setting in the screen reader to account for such behavior.

 

[The Count]

Yes... That's the problem I've had on other websites that feature a self-refreshing function. In further news after a bit of browsing, it's sometimes taking me to the beginning of the post I was viewing or to the top of the page. Like I said, hope this can be resolved.

 

[Phillip]

I took the automatic refresh out for the time being.

 

[The Count]

Thanks Phil, things are working much smoother now. Wanted to ask though, is there anything I can do to remove the automatic refresh on my end, so all the other members who don't have a problem with the self-refreshingNow Playing listing/graphics can have that running on their own ends instead?
Again, not the most tek-sabe person, just trying to help with a suggestion or two. Thanks for all the great work here at the forum and have a great weekend.