New website

[Jim Webster]

Appreciate a lot of effort has probably gone into the website however would make the point that it does not work on windows xp machines, it's also hard to find links to some things e.g league results. Also can no longer view live grades? Forcing people to become members just to view live grades seems a bit over the top, especially if you are proposing using them for team orders in some events!

Windows XP is no longer a supported platform.  See extract from the Windows support site.

( https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help...of-support )


Microsoft provided support for Windows XP for the past 12 years. But the time came for us, along with our hardware and software partners, to invest our resources toward supporting more recent technologies so that we can continue to deliver great new experiences.
As a result, technical assistance for Windows XP is no longer available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC.

Microsoft has also stopped providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download on Windows XP. If you already have Microsoft Security Essentials installed, you'll continue to receive antimalware signature updates for a limited time.

However, please note that Microsoft Security Essentials (or any other antivirus software) will have limited effectiveness on PCs that do not have the latest security updates.

This means that PCs running Windows XP will not be secure and will still be at risk for infection.

If you continue to use Windows XP now that support has ended, your computer will still work but it might become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses.

[JRedpath]

Hi Jim, 

Yes aware it is no longer supported, however with an estimated 10-15% of people still on xp I feel it is a mistake to make  the website unaccessible to large numbers of people. Does not particularly bother me as I have windows 10 pc also. Also not found any other websites that no longer work on XP yet! 

Andy I can't answer why some members of my club are not chess Scotland members.. I don't know who you are referring to and I am not aware who is and isn't a member! From my own perspective I don't play enough chess to justify membership fee, I've not played congresses in 10 years and play about 15-20 games a year max. Therefore the only reason for me to join would be to show support for chess in Scotland I guess... However I have issues with how the money is and has been spent over the past few years so I choose not to. That's probably a discussion for another thread though! 

I'm certainly not going to pay membership fee just to view live grades as I can calculate my own easily using the grading formula/spreadsheet. 

[Andy Howie]

Joe, it is not the Operating system, it will be the browser you are using. If you are using IE, from memory XP only supports up to IE8. Try using Chrome or Firefox. Chrome stopped XP support last year Firefox I am not so sure of
If
*quick edit* just checked and firefox does support XP https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/...and-vista/ If you look at the Microsoft model, they will support OS N+1. Win 10 is already on its 4th iteration (RS2). As we are finding, we are having issues getting new hardware working on TH1 (first release) never mind going back to XP!

[Jonathan Livingstone]

The access to the live online grading system, it has never been free to everyone in recent years has it? There have been periods where it has been made open free access now and again as a trial for people (probably needs better advertised though?). Area graders have access and a club the size of Hamilton must have 1 or 2 area graders. Perhaps Rich/Spens cup captains could be given access for the season, or for the duration of the clubs involvements in the competition.

[JRedpath]

Thanks Andy.. Tried using chrome and ie but not Firefox! 

On the old site you could view the live grading list.. Just not individual results so could at least see who was currently higher rated.

[Andrew McHarg]

Yes aware it is no longer supported, however with an estimated 10-15% of people still on xp I feel it is a mistake to make  the website unaccessible to large numbers of people. Does not particularly bother me as I have windows 10 pc also. Also not found any other websites that no longer work on XP yet!

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On the old site you could view the live grading list.. Just not individual results so could at least see who was currently higher rated.

As Andy said, it's really the browser that's the issue, rather than the operating system itself. We didn't test the new website on very old browsers (such as the like that would have been the default IE browser on a Windows XP desktop). The reason for this is quite simply that we don't have the resources to guarantee that the website will work on all the old platforms (in some cases we may have had to produce the same feature two or three times using different technologies to make it compatible). And the benefit of doing this is just not there to be honest. Especially since the numbers of people using such old browsers is only getting smaller. In reality it won't be anything like 10%-15% of people, because a lot of those XP users will have newer browsers on their computers. And that 10%-15% (if indeed this is the correct figure) would only be people running Windows desktops. A significant proportion of the market share is Apple machines and approximately 50% of web browsing is now done on a tablet or smartphone anyway. So the people that cannot use the new website as a result of having an outdated web browser is probably <1%.

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I've had a look at the Top100 Live list on the old website and without logging in it doesn't reveal the live grades. It does show you the correct order of players (based on their live grades), alongside their published grades, but non-members couldn't see the live grades. Is this what you mean?

In any case, the principle on the old website was that live grades would be hidden to non-members. It was like that from the beginning and the new website is essentially the same.

[George Neave]

This new site is not making good use of screen space. We see about half the information we used to on the old site before you have to start scrolling and clicking. As result, for the casual / lazy viewer (like me) its likely you will miss things. For example I completely missed that there was an event in Kirkaldy yesterday and only discovered today when I scrolled down below permanent ad for the Scottish Championship. ...to late then.

Is there any chance we can squish things up a bit so we get a similar same amount of info on the screen as we used to?

[mclarke]

George - most modern browsers let you zoom out on a site-by-site basis (Try Ctrl and '-' key). Browsing this site at 67% is comparable to the last version of the site. Maybe that'd be worth a try?

[David Clayton]

This new site is not making good use of screen space. We see about half the information we used to on the old site before you have to start scrolling and clicking. As result, for the casual / lazy viewer (like me) its likely you will miss things. For example I completely missed that there was an event in Kirkaldy yesterday and only discovered today when I scrolled down below permanent ad for the Scottish Championship. ...to late then.

Is there any chance we can squish things up a bit so we get a similar same amount of info on the screen as we used to?

I think the new website looks modern and clean, but I would agree with George about screen space allocation. The left hand menu column takes up about one third of the page. 

It does however allow the rather long tournament title of 'Edinburgh Morning and Afternoon FIDE Blitz Competition' to fit in one one line. I hope the length of this tournament title isn't causing the column to expand to fit the text in!

So my feedback for a future release is - "Would it be possible to reduce the height of the header banner and the width of the left hand menu column?".

[George Neave]

George - most modern browsers let you zoom out on a site-by-site basis (Try Ctrl and '-' key). Browsing this site at 67% is comparable to the last version of the site. Maybe that'd be worth a try?

Sure this is possible but the default view on 100% zoom should be optimized for the majority of the audience