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Lots of ways UK Free TV is little bit better today

I am taking the opportunity of being bed-ridden for at least six weeks to sort out some upgrades, updates and bug fixes for this our 13 year old website. Here is what I have done.

Making things work better together  Photograph: Shutterstock
Making things work better together Photograph: Shutterstock
published on UK Free TV

All channels page

https://ukfree.tv/channels/all

The ever popular "all channels" page has been tidied up.   This was a lot of very old PHP3 code that I refactored to modern standards.  The internal changes mean I can sort out several long-standings issues.  For clarity the symbols used now have pop-ups to explain their meaning (Sun symbol= daytime).  Also each channel type is on a separate paper and most channels now have popups so you can find out more without having to click. 

The format is clearer with more space and also extra gaps every five rows.  Each of the watch now (or listen now) buttons has been checked to ensure it takes you to the correct live page. 

 

Fixed broken auto links and added new link popups and glossary

The code I wrote for UK free TV automatically adds links to help answer questions you didn't even know you wanted answering.   This applies to both above the line and below the line posts. 

This has been both fixed and extended.   The fix is the code no longer tries to stuff links into existing links!  The upgrade is, as shown here:  glossary help is now shown with green double underline and pops up on the page when you click/hover; off-site links still show the "favicon" for the site linked to.

In addition, any link to a story or other page here on UK Free TV shows a popup "tooltip" with the summary of what can you find there:

 

Satellite footprints

https://ukfree.tv/extras/satellite_footprints

In the backend I have also written some new tools to ensure that I get regular notifications of changes to the satellite allocations, so this page is always up to date.

The same tools also check the data for Freeview and Freesat channels being moved, renamed or replaced. 

 

Watch TV live and listen to live radio now on the web

https://ukfree.tv/channels/live

This page has a new larger, responsive format.   All of the links have been checked, of course.   There are also tooltips for each station

 

Other fixes

Stories that are being read are, once again, being promoted to the top of section pages.  An error was not reviving the stories and allowing them to fester in the "Other stories" lists.   

The "meta description" are no longer excluding "pointless" words, so you can read them.  

Several pages were missing titles, these have all been found and fixed.  



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Privacy policy5
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Comments
Monday, 3 August 2015
M
MikeB
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

9:12 PM

Brianist: One strange querk, which I've only just noticed. I'm using the latest version of Firefox and when I type a comment, the edges of the comment box bascially disappears, along with the firs letter or two of what your trying to type. It tends to occur on the left hand side, especially as the formatting kicks in and makes the other side fine.
Its not a big deal, but does mean you cant see what your starting to type!

I've also just noticed that although your details kind of get saved when you tick the 'Save my details' box, it doesn't fill the name and email boxes automatically - you type the first letter and then it comes up as an option, unlike before, and it assumes automatically that you want email updates, which you then have to untick. Again, all this was previously automatic. Still, these are quibbles, and the site seems to be working fine.

Hope your leg is feeling better.

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MikeB's 2,579 posts GB flag
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
MikeP
sentiment_very_satisfiedPlatinum

8:15 AM

Briantist
The links seem to be working OK this morning, thanks for your efforts.
The issue reported by MikeB above is also apparwent on my system in FF. The line reading "UK Free TV is here..." looses the word "be" at the end of the line, so it seems the width settings for the text space and the bounding box seem to not suit FF.

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MikeP's 3,056 posts GB flag
Friday, 7 August 2015
Briantist
sentiment_very_satisfiedOwner

7:14 PM

MikeP: I'm still not at the bottom of the Firefox CSS problem, but I have now sorted out the "cookie" issue with the "Save My Details" not working. You can see your own posts again too, see the Your UK Free TV settings page.

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Briantist's 38,915 posts US flag
Sunday, 5 June 2016
R
Richard Cooper
sentiment_satisfiedGold

8:36 PM
Norwich

Hi Brian. I am using the latest version of Firefox, which is 46.0.1 at the time of writing, and I am very pleased to say that all of your improvements to ukfree.tv are rendering perfectly. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you have put into this site.

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Richard Cooper's 471 posts GB flag
Richard's: mapR's Freeview map terrainR's terrain plot wavesR's frequency data R's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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