Comments on: Yahoo! TV: Ajax’d up Beta

By: coskunlar

coskunlar — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:18:58 +0000

Along with the new Mail app, Yahoo has recently been adept at making very pretty but unusably slow applications.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 18:19:59 +0000

I used to run UNIX shell scripts against YTV to send myself emails with the college football, college basketball, racing and other programs on. That still worked up until last week and my script started to get errors. Now I’m looking for a new place to get text listings (i.e. I can edit the URL to search for programs and sed/awk out the info I want. As much as I hate MS, I use MSN TV now. I’m anti-MS (I’d have a Linux box at home if my wife wasn’t a whimp when it came to computers).

By: Jeff Shell

Jeff Shell — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:20:02 +0000

I also used Yahoo TV for years after I migrated over to My Yahoo from My Excite. The old Yahoo TV was fast, fairly accurate, fairly up-to-date, and the ad content wasn’t invasive.

My beef with the new Yahoo TV is that it’s flat-out broken for me. If I even manage to get local listings, they’re shown in eastern time. It’s current, but when I’m looking for “what’s on now” at 6:00, the time bar is set to 8:00.

Even worse – I couldn’t find any feedback button/link. The site said it was in ‘beta’. But ‘beta’ suggests a desire for feedback, but I couldn’t find anywhere to submit information about the problems I was experiencing. Sure, the site looks slick. But it’s now such a pain to get my preferred list of channels displayed with the right showtimes. I too have gone elsewhere.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:10:45 +0000

I was under the impression that the new TV Listings app was a Flex app. I know that the Yahoo Maps app was done in Flex, maybe I’m just mistaken….

But yes, to join in the chorus of negativity…Yahoo has made it so absolutely slow that I have gone elsewhere to check TV Listings.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:58:31 +0000

Yahoo TV, somebody cap it’s ass. Zap2it’s my bi-yotch now. It ain’t all that, but it ain’t gonna be no Ho to Beta. That skank.

By: freddy

freddy — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:06:51 +0000

I agree with the negative comments – I’ve switched. Too slow, poor load speed . . . etc, etc.

Ajax is becoming a very hated program as it is misused in this manner resulting in people avoiding the site. Is that they goal when Ajax was used to overhaul this site – if chasing people is the goal, congrats, you’ve succeeded.

By: joe

joe — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:53:28 +0000

I agree with almost all the comments on the problems of the new Yahoo TV; but the one problem that is overwhelming for me is that there no longer is a connection to Yahoo Calendar so you no longer can make your personal guide for the week.

By: pillowfactory

pillowfactory — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:53:43 +0000

This blog provides an accurate, objective critique of the new Yahoo! TV…
http://deepthoughts.orsomethinglikethat.com/2006/12/06/goodbye-yahoo-tv-hello-tv-guide/

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:22:20 +0000

They are horrible. Beside everything else already mentioned; for me the new site won’t even list shows that are on right now. It lists shows that are on tomorrow with a time (also tomorrow) that doesn’t match.
Screen Capture:
http://wanee.com/yahootv.png
Notice Late Night with Conan beginning at 8:00 AM
I’m especially disappointed because I use to use Yahoo TV Listings to program my Tivo.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:38:21 +0000

The new inefficient yahoo! TV page is nothing but a headache. I am going to find a different site. If anyone has a suggestion, I’d appreciate it.

By: Lory

Lory — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:21:38 +0000

I hate the new TV page…. takes so long to load and you have to wait…… most of the shows are not interactive, you can’t click on a network or channel to see what’s on that day… what a waste… guess it will be leaving my homepage….

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:56:58 +0000

Yahoo broke the TV listings. Comments here and on many other sources are 95% negative. Curious to see of Yahoo management listens to the market, realizes their mistake, and fixes it with a retro.

In the meantime, they led me to meevee.com. Pretty close to the old Yahoo.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 09:51:59 +0000

Terrible. I actually bookmarked the listings page because the intro page was pretty useless; now it’s actually twice as useless and annoying.

Talk about a lack of self-restraint.

By: steve

steve — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 03:33:22 +0000

it takes forever to load. nothing was wrong with the old layout

By: Brade

Brade — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:18:08 +0000

I have to agree that this change has nullified the site’s usefulness. I decided to go back to zap2it.com, and found that they have also redesigned since I last used them. It’s a very nice looking page, pretty quick loading. So in the end, I guess I’m glad yahoo broke their page. It forced me to make a change for the better.

By: Editrix

Editrix — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:11:22 +0000

Horrible. Not only did it not save my favorite channels, but it doesn’t give me an option for broadcast, instead assuming I have cable. I’m replacing my bookmark to Yahoo! TV with one for Zap2it.

By: CrackWilding

CrackWilding — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:14:46 +0000

They managed to take everything people hate about Flash and reproduce it in Ajax. What a disaster.

Yahoo might look good, but it sure as hell doesn’t work good. I feel like they are making a concerted effort to drive away everyone without a bleeding edge machine. So fine, I’m gone. I’ll get headlines from CNN and TV listings from Zap2It.

By: Vernon

Vernon — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:47:08 +0000

Not a fan myself. Sure the clean look is nice, but the TV listings area is the only part of the site I would ever use. Now I see the first 5 or so channels and the rest of the screen is a blank white slate. I would file this in the “overuse” category.

By: Shahid Shah

Shahid Shah — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:34:20 +0000

While AJAX is useful and helps to build more interactive and usable websites, it can still be a pain and be inaccessible.

OK, fine. The interface looks good, but with that loading on a page down is going backwards in terms of accessibility and usability. And, in this case, speed. Effective usage of AJAX is to reduce speed, not increase it.

By: Justin Kramer

Justin Kramer — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:27:32 +0000

Damn, I used to use Yahoo TV specifically because it was simple and fast. Now, scrolling down, left or right, clicking on a time slot — the animations and responses are all slow and cumbersome (Firefox on a Macbook).

They took something simple — a grid — and way overdid it. It they kept the markup lightweight, loaded the whole page, and gave a simple DHTML popup for details, it would be so much nicer. This might work in a few years when JavaScript becomes super-optimized and fast, but it doesn’t now.

Also, they cluttered up the front page and moved the main reason I visit the site — TV listings — below the fold and on the right sidebar, with a tiny link for localizing it. Frick.