The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Hello CD Community,

As of yesterday, TBA announced on its blog (http://thebluealliance.tumblr.com/) that its new site (http://www.thebluealliance.com/) was up and running :) . I get nothing :mad: . Whenever I type in a team number, the same practically-blank screen stays and the only think that changes is the URL.

There is a snapshot attached.

I already contacted TBA over email about this yesterday and they told me it should now work (which it still doesn't) :rolleyes: . I've just also posted the problem on their site issues page (https://spreadsheets.google.com/view...QSW5UUlE6M Q).

Is this only happening to me? Does the new TBA work for you? If it does, why? Do I need a new flash player or to change internet settings :confused: ?

Thank You,
-Alex Montero

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

The search doesn't work for me, but I'm able to navigate to teams and events. This is using Firefox 3.6 on Windows XP.

Internet Explorer 7 gives me the same result as you.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Works fine for me.

http://puu.sh/RpR

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Well, there's your problem! You're using IE...:rolleyes:

Using Firefox 3.6.13, I think it is working, other than the search.

I get two links, one for events, one for teams. Both have a full list. Both work. But the search bar does not work.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Site works but search does not for me as well, using Chrome 9.0.597.83 beta on Windows 7. Bug report submitted, also reported that ties are displaying as blue wins (Blue alliance score and teams bolded).

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

same thing for me. blank site and no searches.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

The site does not work with the IE9 beta either.
on chrome, everything worked but the search bar.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

New layout is pretty nice. Sort of feel like it's missing something though. Hmm...

I tested it in Chrome, Firefox and IE8 64-Bit (I think that's the Explorer I have) and everything worked fine (except search) on everything but IE, I just got the grey TBA banner at the top and nothing else.

Does anyone know if TBA is planning a webcast portal similar to SoapChat? (Unless SoapChat is still around)

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Safari, on the iPad works great.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Just tried it on my iPhone 4 and it worked really well. The only thing I noticed is that the years are a bit too far up and are covered a bit by the "Events attended in XXXX" text.

Did video work on your iPad? It didn't work on my iPhone, there was just a screen shot with the no video slash through it.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Search is known to not work. I still need to implement that. :)

Thanks for reporting issues you're coming across! If you fill out this form with issues, it will make them even easier to fix. If you're seeing overlapping text or blank pages (on anything but search), please let me know!

It sounds like we have an issue with Internet Explorer, which I haven't tested with yet. I'm not doing anything fancy, so I am surprised it breaks so completely. If anyone is able to try to debug it, please let me know what's up, otherwise I'll dual boot and start poking around.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

If you can post screenshots from your iPhone, that'd be awesome.

Most "streaming" videos are MP4, but not all of them. What video were you trying to watch?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Video works well, too - at least the ones I tried to see. I got the "Need Flash" message - but that is to play it in the window, there was a link to "download" the video. I clicked that and it pulled it up and played it in a new screen just fine.

Greg - awesome job, as always! Thanks for everything you guys do!

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Hmm, I thought I had configured jwplayer to properly revert to HMTL5 <video> if the device didn't support Flash. I guess I need to revisit this. If anyone has experience here, please let me know.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

If you're looking for suggestions, can we get links between years for events? If I'm on the page for 2010 Kettering District, links to the same event in different years..

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I'm not a fan of the homepage, but overall I like the layout much more then the old one. It seems...sleeker in a way. If more could be done with the homepage, then I think it would be perfect!

EDIT:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/9999

Is this a bug, or are you using this for testing? It showed up on the bottom of the teams list, and anything else (such as http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/9993 ) gives me an error

EDIT AGAIN:

Wait, was there really a team 9999 at one point?!?!

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Any suggestions for the home page? I think we'll put "This week's events" there soon.

I don't know about Team 9999! I've never looked for them before, but it sure looks like we have match data that suggests that they competed. I wonder how this strange artifact came into our system?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Greg, There was a 2010 rookie team that competed at the first GRITS off-season event before they were assigned an official team number. They played Lunacy with a robot kindly loaned to them from 1746, Forsyth Alliance. I assumed the event coordinators assigned them 9999 in the field management system.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

This shows the slight overlap of the years. (It's not even really an overlap, the text is just really close to the line above it.)





Here's the video I was trying to watch, I didn't try any others.





Sorry for the giant pictures.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

It shows up fine at home, where I use Firefox.

I get the same nearly-blank screen when I use IE at work. (Rattin' smattin' IE...)

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Please make a different color background lol. white is just too...bright and it makes it look like there is less on the page.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I like the white, it looks cleaner, almost google-ish

As for what to put on the homepage, I'm not sure, I was just stating that it looks a bit bland

Any word if that "Contact team" button will be used in the new version? (as in emails, phone numbers, whatever)

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Greg, are the video files missing overall on the new site? I have clicked on many locations where there are videos on .net and nothing is showing on the .com?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I have found that if there is a video for that match, if you just click the match, a new screen opens with the match info, plus a placeholder for the video (or at least a screen capture from the video?), but at the bottom a link to "download the video" which, at least on my iPad, launches the video in a separate screen. I tried this with 2009 matches, which I knew had videos for those matches. Don't know if this is universal or not, but at least in Safari, on the iPad, the "film" icon is not there, but there are still videos associated with the match.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

After I posted I did find some matches at some regionals that did have files if I clicked the "download video". There are many however which do not have the videos they should have. I have to remind myself it is still in testing and bug phase so I'm not too worried about it, and all the files are still in multiple locations.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Can you report specific matches that are missing videos?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Yea those are all supposed to fit on one line. Maybe we need to move the "previous years" section into the "Information" block so it can overflow more gracefully.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I can, search 1592 and go to 2007 and we are missing all of our Florida regional matches and videos.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Definitely an import problem with Florida 2007, I agree. That data error seems to exist on dotnet too. Any pointers to correct data?

What match on dotnet has video for Florida that dotcom doesn't?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Looking back at .net now we are missing 3 videos from Florida and 3 videos from Newton that we had before .com was launched.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Can you link to a specific match that has a video on .net that doesn't on .com? We haven't changed anything on .net from previously, so all video that was on .net should still be there.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

This is just a suggestion but could the event and yearly W-L-T records be brought back?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Just pushed a new version. Fixes:

• Search box works, but Google hasn't indexed us yet, so doesn't "work"
• Fixes page rendering issues in Internet Explorer (let me know if you're still having problems)
• Fixes the video player, which I accidentally broke by moving the javascript
• Better html page titles

Let me know if anything isn't working still. :)

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Hadn't reimplemented the film icon yet. Thanks for the reminder. :) It's back.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Facebook like button doesnt work.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

What do you mean? What browser?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

chrome,

say on team 40

this is the error i get:

You failed to provide a valid list of administators. You need to supply the administors using either a "fb:app_id" meta tag, or using a "fb:admins" meta tag to specify a comma-delimited list of Facebook users.

<script>
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
FB.init({appId: 'your app id', status: true, cookie: true,
xfbml: true});
};
(function() {
var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true;
e.src = document.location.protocol +
'//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
}());

that is code from your side

'your app id' needs to be replaced with your facebook api key

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

When viewing on my zune's browser, at least on the hompage, the content (Pretty much where it says The Blue Alliance) and down appear lined up with the bottom of "teams" in the left nav bar, pushing everything down below it. Wish I could get a picture of it.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I can't reproduce this. I added an fb:admins tag, although I had thought our fb:page_id tag was enough. Can you post a screenshot of the error?

Thanks!

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Now it works fine! the admins tag lets the facebook api know the app or user that is responsible for the liked page.

What are you using for a database? I had a nightmare experience with google's datastore.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

We're using the AppEngine datastore. What problems did you have?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

They may be fixed now. Also I used the java version of appengine not python.
I had issues with objects persisting and such. It seems you are not having the same issues. I would try to store and update objects, and sometimes they would persist, other times they wouldn't. It was a bit random.

Honestly it slowed down development for me so bad that I ended up renting a VPS so I could use mysql and blazeds, which I had success with in the past.

are you using python or java for appengine?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

At first I thought my Internet Explorer was crashing because the page was white, but then I realized it really was white. To say the least it threw me off.

I have been a supreme fan of thebluealliance.net, and seeing the dotcom version is cool, for instance the massive list of teams and their numbers (really cool), but I still miss being able to just type in the number and have the page jump right up (now there is a middle-man page through the google search)

Best of luck this year,
Petrie

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

My lead scout was grumbling last night about not having the win/loss/tie records for each event. No biggie, she counted them herself. Overall she liked it alot. I'll get on it tonight and poke around.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

First I want to say We LOVE the blue alliance :) Makes scouting/strategizing/etc soooo much easier!

Few things we noticed
1511 specific - missing FLR 2005 & FLR 2007 (the full event, not just videos) and PTC is listed in our name (and shouldnt be)... That is probably from an old pull, as FIRST had it listed for about a month. Not sure if the names get updated often?

Wondering where the team# search went... its just a convenience rather than clicking teams & scrolling, or using the google search which seems to bring you to a specific event. It was just a really nice feature of the old BA homepage :)

Also wondering where the photos went. It was nice to see the photo of the robot from that year (when they were uploaded)

Other than that and a future wish list it looks good :) The white does give it a nice clean look, but personally I miss the black. Ahh well :)

Thanks for all the hard work Greg & crew!

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Hello TBA Crew,

Thank you for fixing the compatibility issue with Internet Explorer. It gets a lot of hate, but it is a major browser, so I appreciate it.

I wanted to comment that since there are a few discrepancies in team info from the dotorg and the new dotcom site, could you please include a new badge-creation system based on new site date on the dotcom site? It's a very helpful feature.

Also, other people are mentioning the lack of certain events, but I'm not sure if anyone else is missing their team's first year. My team first participated in 2007, but 2007 isn't a year listed under it. Is there maybe a problem with posting rookie years? It is listed, with match results and videos, on the old site.

Thanks again for the fix.:)

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Would it be possible to have the opportunity for viewers/users to link to a youtube file or upload a video for matches? It seems like a growing number of teams are taking their own video of competition matches... rather than having these videos scattered across youtube, it'd be really nice to have them linked from The Blue Alliance! :-)

I have video of the elimination matches from the Nashua Week Zero scrimmage from last weekend... could there be a tournament page for it? I don't have a qualification match schedule or results; however, I do have the results from the elimination matches! Would it be possible to put this info up on The Blue Alliance?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I noticed that when an alliance wins an elimination in two matches, the third unplayed match is showing up as a tie.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

It works for me but I can't find any videos. I wanted to watch our matches because I didn't get to see any but there are none that I can find. I just says "no video availible"

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

What regional? The videos are recorded by members/mentors of FIRST, not FIRST directly nor TheBlueAlliance. We rely on the people who take their time to sit and parse the video then upload online. If someone did not record the video unfortunately there will not be video available. There are a few regionals that should be showing up in the next few days as people have gotten time to parse them, but we are talking about potentially HOURS of time to do so.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Milwaukee. I thought they used their own camera because the videos I've seen before are all from the same angle but I am probably wrong.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I'm fairly certain that the video on The Blue Alliance from the Wisconsin regional for the past few years has been recorded by Kevin Kolodziej of team 1675.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Yeah, he does do a lot.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I really miss the direct search to a team's TBA page. Now when one searches a number, they have a bunch of choices to pick from, none of them are from 2011. So, for example, to find my team's records from last week, I have to:

a) search "2614"
b) click on "2614 2010" (or something of the like)
c) once I'm there, click on "2011."


-Point is, I'd really like to go back to where we can search directly for a team number. While the embedded Google search is nice, there needs to be another search bar that links directly to the teams' pages. The list of teams on the homepage is not a replacement. It is kind of a pain to scroll all the way down every time one wants to search for a team.

Just some suggestions. Other than those, the site is great! I don't mean to complain, just a little constructive criticism :)

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Alex, you can browse directly to a teams 2011 page using the following url structure:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/XXXX

Where the X's are the team number. No leading 0's should be used.

Examples:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/1
http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/16
http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/111
http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/1114

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

I agree, I use that url structure with Chrome's search thingy, so I can just type "tba 2614" to find your team.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Yeah, I've been doing that. I just figured it might be a bit more intuitive to have a search bar...

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

How do you link your signature to TBA? I've seen lots of people who do but how?

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Those are on the old thebluealliance.net...someone should make a page for making them on the new site

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

A little less (well, maybe just different) this year. Dave G. from 269 recorded and uploaded the video from 2010. I know he recorded and parsed for this year as well...not sure why its not up on the site yet. I'll check with him on that.

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

Greg rolled out a release in the past couple weeks where the search box detects team numbers and automagically (sorry, I've been wanting to use that for some time now) redirects to the team page.

Another feature added was RSS feeds for events that publishes match data. I was the one who developed it so I kinda wanted to plug it. :p

Re: The Blue Alliance dotcom
 

You can still create a Signature on TBA. Just click the little blue icon that says TBA next to your team number on CD. It will bring you to the old TBA site. Once you are there. Go to the right and you should find a link that says Team Badges. Once you are there just put the info required, and copy the code they give you and put it into your signature box