Site Update, Monday noon. Possible Downtime.
Posted by Sean Forman on October 24, 2010
Assuming tonight's build runs as expected, we'll be doing a sitewide update around noon tomorrow.
This update will:
1) update (very slightly) the look and feel of the site. I've cleaned up much of the css on the site and made some updates and what I hope will be improvements in the appearance of the site. For example, we are removing underlines for links. I researched this and found the 99% of the top 100 sites traffic-wise no longer have underlined links.
2) we will be switching from prototype to jquery for a javascript framework. For 99% of you this should mean nothing other than all of the sports-reference sites will soon have a more unified look, feel and functionality. With this switch made you should also see more improvements and bug fixes made as all of the Play Index code has been upgraded, and
3) we've made a number of tweaks to page structure and formatting that should result in improved site performance. We are still somewhat at the mercy of our ad providers, but we've tried to wring all of the performance improvements out of what we have control over.
If all goes well, these updates should go live around noon ET tomorrow. There may be some unplanned downtime involved, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
October 24th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
When will the ROE and DP components of WAR be updated?
October 25th, 2010 at 8:06 am
My name says it all.
October 25th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Starting to copy things over now.
October 25th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I like the look, but it's going to take a little getting used to.
October 25th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I'm still working on the blog and bullpen and box scores, but most everything else is now updated.
October 25th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
underlines for links help the visually impaired and color blind visitors you may receive differentiate between regular text and hyperlinks. Plus, most browsers add underlines to hyperlinks automatically with zero extra code. It actually takes code to remove them (text-decoration:none). You shouldn't sacrifice usability for site appearance.
October 25th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Also, the margins of this post look off in Firefox 3.6.11. You are floating '#page_content' left but not clearing '#page_container'.
October 25th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Cheese,
I understand what you are saying and removing the underlines is not something I did lightly. As I said 99% of the top 100 sites worldwide remove the underlines from links. I don't know any sight impaired visitors, but nowadays any reasonable browser can be outfit with a user specified style sheet and they can very, very easily add those back in.
October 25th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Hello, Sean. I wanted to let you know that seeing the pitch sequence in full (see example)...
1. Ball
2. Strike Looking
3. Foul
4. Ball in Play
...I'm unable to see it in the revamped site. I also can't see the defensive alignment, either. I'm sure many Baseball-Ref partisans will want to know when it will be fixed. Thanks.
October 25th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
The WAR ratings for some players has changed a lot.
October 25th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Give it time, folks, give it time. I'm confident the changes will be for the better.
October 25th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Yeah, looks like the WAR totals are pretty well broken.
October 25th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
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October 25th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
On some pages, including the all-important home page, I now have to scroll sideways to see the whole width. I have my resolution set at 1024x768. Making the resolution smaller would be tougher on my old eyes.
I'm using the now-2-generations-old Internet Explorer 7 browser.
October 26th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
I noticed that I didn't have to scroll sideways on the front page today. If you tweaked something, thanks.
October 26th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
DD,
I went back and more carefully computed the width of the page and the available width in the browser to guarantee no horizontal scrolling. We get about 17% of our users at that resolution, so we definitely don't want to antagonize all of them.