Help with troubleshooting new website www.abrandnewyear.org

[lblack-p40]

Hello everyone,
Tonight the Church launched a new website for the youth at http://www.abrandnewyear.org. We are asking for feedback from all users out there to test the speed of the site. Specifically the video area. Please click around on the site and report back in this forum your experience with the speed of the site. Does the video play "normally"? Does it perform as you would expect?
Please respond with your subjective results of your speed test along with your location and internet connection type.

Thank you,

Lance

[russellhltn]

I wasn't impressed with the speed. There's no feedback when the video is buffering with the built-in viewer, so when I click on things nothing seems to happen for a long time. Like 30 seconds to a full minute.

In some cases the video couldn't keep up with the download.

The site seems to be designed with the idea that it could take up my full 1280 x 1024 desktop real estate rather then be happy with the smaller window it opened in.

[lajackson]

I am running FireFox 3 on a DSL line. The site is slow, and it is annoying to have to scroll back and forth to see everything that is on each page.

As for the videos, after about three minutes, my browser says they have loaded, but I still cannot play them. And I know they have not loaded, looking at the size of some of them. There is no way I will get 91 meg or over 100 meg, or even 45 meg (those are just the first three I clicked on) down my DSL line before the new year hits where I am located.

Sorry.

[PhillipsCJ]

I'm getting mixed results, the first time I loaded the main page, the bottom side scrolling bar didn't load for a long time (1-2 minutes on a fast connection). At first I didn't realize that there was supposed to be something else there so I clicked all over try to find a link- a "loading" message would be helpful there.

The video takes a long time to load, again with no loading message. They would load much more quickly from a Flash Media Server.

On a positive note, the site looks great and it looks like there are some great ways to involve youth.

[jdlessley]

Videos take from 9 to 17 seconds to begin play. For the first minute and a half there are stalls that occur for 1.5 to 4 seconds in both the audio and video. Spacing between stalls is from 20 seconds to 33 seconds. Beyond two and a half or three minutes into a video there are no further problems.

I am in Columbus Ohio on a 1.5 Mbps DSL line (actual speed varies from 900 to 1300 Kbps)

[jeromer7]

In Omaha, NE, using a cable modem, I experienced similar problems with the video clips as expressed by earlier posts. However, the rest of the links worked great. I think the overall layout is fine and seems to be in a form that will be attractive to the youth.

[russellhltn]

The site seems to be designed with the idea that it could take up my full 1280 x 1024 desktop real estate rather then be happy with the smaller window it opened in.

I'll change that to say it was designed for 1280x1024. On my 1024 x 768 laptop it requires up/down scrolling to get to the navigation ribbon at the bottom.

[pete_arnett-p40]

Several members of various groups have provided the following updated information:

The church's home page at lds.org has announced the new web page and provides a link, which means that it has been announced to everyone http://www.lds.org/pa/display/0,17884,8212-1,00.html

The new site is located at http://abrandnewyear.lds.org

Also, the "A Brand New Year Introduction" web page states that leaders were sent a copy of a DVD that was to arrive in Dec2008 with a letter asking them to let everyone know about the URL

Thanks,
Your Fellow Servant
Porter (Pete) Lee Arnett Jr.

[pete_arnett-p40]

Testing by several members in our area shows that the new website is not ready for prime time, because videos, music and images are still very slow in loading and may stall during playing (etc.)

We are using ATT DSL links in Palm Beach County Florida

http://www.whatismyip.com/speedtest/index.asp website to Atlanta server show that the speed today is
Download Speed: 1899 kbps (237.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 124 kbps (15.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

Using Firefox version 3.0.5 with Flash version 10.0.12.36

Also, it would have been great if headquarters could have told us in early Dec2008 that the site was ready for testing

[jdlessley]

I'll change that to say it was designed for 1280x1024. On my 1024 x 768 laptop it requires up/down scrolling to get to the navigation ribbon at the bottom.

I am using a 19" wide screen flat panel monitor with maximum resolution available at 1140x900 and also find that having to scroll down to view the navigation buttons displeasureable. Would it be possible to have the page auto scale to fit the browser page?