AMG has posted a response to the criticism of the new design here (amusing):
http://www.gloriousnoise.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1992 Here's the text: --- "Responses to the major user feedback issues â suitable for forums, blogs, etc. GENERAL COMMENTS We've been on the net since 1995 providing a free music reference resource. We would hope that we've earned a little patience from our users as we work through the transition to the new site and some of the difficulties we're experiencing. We're a small company with small company resources. While we're flattered by our users' expectations, we are not Amazon or Yahoo! We're a small company from Ann Arbor, MI, trying to provide a great resource for music fans. SLOW RESPONSE TIMES We are experiencing some response time delays as we work to get all of our servers properly balanced. Additionally, we will be adding server capacity over the next week which will further improve response times. While this site is bigger and more complex than and will be somewhat slower than the old site, the difference once we get everything at peak form won't be very noticeable. SUPPORT OF NON-IE FOR WINDOWS BROWSERS Optimizing a site of allmusic's complexity and size for all browsers and operating systems is no small feat. This isn't a simple "brochure-ware" site of static pages. While we would love to optimize the AMG sites for all browsers and all operating systems, we simply don't have the necessary resources to do so. Despite some users flattering comparison of our site with that of Google, Amazon and Yahoo!, we are a small company with limited resources. So, we had to pick the most widely used browser by our users (over 87%) to optimize the site for and then work on compatibility issues with the other major browsers as we go forward. We are first concentrating on fixing some compatibility issues with the Mozilla browsers, which are mainly visual, not functional. The main Mozilla problem is a glitch in how tables are displayed. We're hoping to have this fixed in the near future. We will also be working to fix some compatibility problems with Safari (Mac). We ask for your patience as we work on these issues. REGISTRATION The allmusic site remains totally FREE to our users and only requires registration for access to new Premium Content. If you are uncomfortable registering, we understand and invite you to continue to use the portion of the site (roughly equivalent to the former site) that does not require registration. But we would like to take a moment to explain why we have intrduced registration for Premium Content. The AMG websites are FREE sites that are marginally supported by only advertising and product sales. To attract advertisers and retailers, we need to provide them with basic demographic information of our users so they can determine if our site is a fit for their products. We provide this information only in the aggregate (i.e. 60% of our users are male) and never pass on any individual user information. Please read our privacy policy for more information. Without these advertisers and retailers, the AMG websites would be out of business. Registration is a common practice among free publishing sites such as the AMG sites (i.e. NY Times, LA Times, etc.) that fund their enterprise through advertising and product sales. AMG is in line with common Internet practices and, as a good Internet citizen, zealously protects the privacy of our users. TAB FORMAT We realized when we designed the tab system that we would make some folks unhappy, but we felt the trade off was worth it. If we stuck to the one page approach it would limit our ability to add additional information. That design approach (one page) just doesn't scale as we expand content. And it's a real problem with artists with extensive discographies. We think that once folks take some more time on the site, they'll see that there is much more information available now than there was on the old site. The addition of the Songs and Credits tabs are both good examples of information that just wouldn't be possible in a one page format." --- I think it may be a case of a design team being in way over their heads... Art On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 20:50:04 -0500, Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Just in case anybody asks you, "but how do you *know* the Allmusic Guide > is lame?" and you don't have one of Scott Yanow's reviews handy, now you > have the definitive answer. Just click! <http://www.allmusic.com/>. > Besides being insanely slow and buggy, the new AMG site has this notice > in bright yellow at the top of every page: > > Notice: You are accessing allmusic.com with a browser that is not > currently supported. The appearance and functionality of the site could > be impacted. allmusic.com is optimized for Internet Explorer 5.5 and > above for Windows. > > I mean, it's bad enough that they're launching an MSIE-preferred site at > the very moment that everybody and his dog are jumping *off* MSIE. It's > bad enough that for more than a year everybody has been going standards > and accessibility and these guys spent perfectly good money and what > they got was an old-school tag-soup site. But browser checking??? > That's *so* 1997! > > Does it validate? you ask. (You are Stoner Smurf, aren't you?) You must > be mad. Is it accessible? Let's ask Cynthia (you'll have to type it in > yourself, but trust me, it's spectacular). > > OK, slow, invalid, unaccessible. All we need is the lava lamps. Way to > go, AMG! > > The original of this article (with a few more links -- you can tell what > they are from the context) is on my blog, which, lacking all sense of > common decency, I now shamelessly promote: > <http://blog.crispen.org/archives/000514.html> > -- > Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen > bob at crispen dot org > Ex Cathedra Weblog: http://blog.crispen.org/ > > Don't ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you > come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people > who have come alive. -- Howard Thurman > ***************************************************** > The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ > See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > for some hints on posting to the list & getting help > ***************************************************** > > ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
