I Don't believe It! What Have They Done to AMG?

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Go to http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=MISS70307111543&sql=Bmex8b5z4tsqe
and read the bio. Why have they changed the layout?
Its hellish to read any band with long bios now.

― Victor M, Friday, 11 July 2003 21:33 (twenty-two years ago)

In IE, I actually kind of like it.

In Opera, all the text runs down the middle of the screen and eventually bleeds into the text below, turning the page into a big unreadable mess. Way to stick it to me for using a niche browser, AMG.

― brooke edel (brookedel), Friday, 11 July 2003 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually it's quite handy for me. What browser/version of browser are you running? I have yet to test it on Safari but it works nicely on IE.

Ah, x-post.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 11 July 2003 21:48 (twenty-two years ago)

worx on netscape. a little annoying to scroll, but not as annoying as it was to click on a link to read the entire bio.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned , I am using IE 6. The text is in a confined space meaning i have to scroll a lot and just makes it harder to view. I preferred it to the way it was.

― Victor M, Friday, 11 July 2003 22:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Is there a link to a printer-friendly version of the long-bio webpages? Because if there isn't, this redesign is ass.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Wait, I should stop saying that bad things are ass. Because ass is obviously good. Very good.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Design looks OK in IE. Pity about the bio tho.

― RickyT (RickyT), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Bad things are pants. Pants is clearly bad.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:37 (twenty-two years ago)

as Victor would say "I Don't believe it" !

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Well i found that i'm older than Richard D James.

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Friday, 11 July 2003 22:59 (twenty-two years ago)

but not as annoying as it was to click on a link to read the entire bio.

The statement that provided future historians with a perfect emblem of the dying days of Western civilisation.

― N. (nickdastoor), Friday, 11 July 2003 23:13 (twenty-two years ago)

GODDAMMT, WHY CAN'T FREE STUFF BE THE WAY I WANT IT TO BE!!!!

― Farmer Al (King Kobra), Friday, 11 July 2003 23:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Works on my version of Opera.

I like it, I hated having to click through. Hooray for scrollbars!

― Xii (Xii), Friday, 11 July 2003 23:40 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, i quite like it too! makes it simpler, for me, anyway.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Saturday, 12 July 2003 00:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm mixed on the scrolling, because it means you don't have to click through to get the full bio any more, but yeah, all of that scrolling in a confined space is a bit annoying; it would nice if they also allowed you to click a link to bring it up old-school, too. I haven't tried looking at this on a mobile browser yet but I suspect it will look incredibly horrible.

One thing I do like is that they bring the bio writer credit up to the top, but that's only because my name now appears higher on the page, before the band meets each other and gives themselves a name!

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Saturday, 12 July 2003 00:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I dunno, clicking to scroll (and having to do it a bunch of times) to me is more annoying than clicking through once. Also the little wheel on my mouse doesn't seem to be able to perform its magic scroll function.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Saturday, 12 July 2003 00:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I dunno, clicking to scroll (and having to do it a bunch of times) to me is more annoying than clicking through once.

Seconded. I just sent them my $0.02 of feedback.

― David A. (Davant), Saturday, 12 July 2003 00:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Dastoor WINS

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 12 July 2003 02:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Works for me on Safari. I don't mind it!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 12 July 2003 02:53 (twenty-two years ago)

scrollbars BLOW

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 12 July 2003 02:53 (twenty-two years ago)

jesus christ, I wuz actually doing an intentional double-post there - for effect, you see - and you managed to squeeze your post in during the literally 10 seconds between my two posts.

hats off.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 12 July 2003 02:55 (twenty-two years ago)

*bows*

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 12 July 2003 02:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm using Internet Explorer 5 (on a Mac), and the bio is in a frame roughly 2 inches tall, 1 inch wide, scrollbars and all -- with a totally blank space beside it, same height, roughly 5 inches wide. wtf?

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Saturday, 12 July 2003 03:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Ditto, Paul in Santa Cruz.

(I'm a dittohead.)

― David A. (Davant), Saturday, 12 July 2003 04:18 (twenty-two years ago)

No scrollbars at all in iCab! Hooray!

― JoB (JoB), Saturday, 12 July 2003 10:00 (twenty-two years ago)

It looks okay to me - the bio is maybe 4" tall, and a little wider. I can live with scrolling.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 12 July 2003 18:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Thanks to JoB's post I am now an official convert to iCab.

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Saturday, 12 July 2003 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I noticed this, too. Can't believe anyone would prefer it this way. Fucking horrible... I know there's an AMG guy in here, and I don't want to insult, but things like this make me wonder if the site isn't run by monkeys.

― John 2, Sunday, 13 July 2003 15:14 (twenty-two years ago)

When did they change to making every link javascript, so that you can't shift-click/whatever to open them in a separate page?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, 13 July 2003 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

remember, there are only writer monkeys, and former freelance writer monkeys(at least until they start paying me again) on here.

no tech monkeys, much less any that are connected to the IT/corporate-side of things, are present. Yet.

ya gotta remember, AMG is a weird place; half of the company are music freaks, the other half are your standard humorless corporate/office-types who make sure the bills get paid.

― Kingfish (Kingfish), Sunday, 13 July 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I like the scroll window, but for artists with a lot of albums, you still have to "click for more" to see all of them. So, meh.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 13 July 2003 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

You're into 'artists with a lot of albums'? Sheesh, get with the program you rockist

― dave q, Sunday, 13 July 2003 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Jazzist, thank you very much.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 13 July 2003 17:10 (twenty-two years ago)

In Opera, all the text runs down the middle of the screen and eventually bleeds into the text below, turning the page into a big unreadable mess. Way to stick it to me for using a niche browser, AMG.
There was a controvercy a few months back about Mircosoft-owned websites putting spurious, non-compliant HTML code that confused non-IE browsers. I doubt that AMG is owned by Microsoft, but they might've accident;y wrote bad HTML code.
Also, I think the newest iteration of Opera fixes that glitch.
On the bright side, Opera doesn't react to [ form type = crash ] by crashing.
(Note: I didn't write that form tag the eeeevil way it's supposed to be done. That would be cruel. IE users are human too. Most of them, at least.)
But this is neither here nor there. I'm a Mozilla partisan myself. (its got great pop-up blocking.)

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Sunday, 13 July 2003 19:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Those scrollbars aren't that bad. It make the page look clean and economical.
But there is one thing that bothers me about the Aphex Twin page:

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200_web/drp100/p172/p17242c6q1m.jpg http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/9684/visions/j.jpg
That photo of Richard D James bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Jerry O'Connell (that twit from "Sliders")

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Sunday, 13 July 2003 19:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I like it, I hated having to click through. Hooray for scrollbars!

But THE WINDOW ITSELF already has scroll bars, so adding them to the bio seems redundant and pointless. I mean, wasn't the purpose of the click-through to avoid making readers load lenghty material unless they chose to? Well, now it's all loaded, just partly hidden. Which is exactly what all window scroll bars are for in the first place, only these make you click in a different place, and more often. That is, unless you don't care about the bio and just want to head straight to the discography, etc., in which case, I concede, the change might have its advantages.

― Curt (cgould), Sunday, 13 July 2003 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

As JoB said before, iCab now displays the FULL bio with no scrolling. Loads quickly; easy to scroll past it in the main window if you're not interested.

I think the best design would be to have all the content for a given album appear on a single scrolling page, with links at the top of the page that jump you directly to the sections that interest you. But really it doesn't seem right to complain; for all its fluctuations in quality and imperfect fact-checking, the AMG site remains one of the best examples of free content online. And when you get to heaven you're given a password to the version of the site with streaming audio versions of every album.

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Sunday, 13 July 2003 20:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I wouldn't have minded the inset scrollbar if they'd wrapped the full bio text around the picture (as before) and made the scrollable area wider and taller. Cornered-in like this it seems rather unreadable.

― gazuga (gazuga), Sunday, 13 July 2003 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Scrollable DIVs are standard HTML 4.0 + CSS level 1 spec. Any decent browser should support what AMG is doing to their site.

― moosha, Monday, 14 July 2003 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, it's an Iframe, not "scrollable DIV", it seems.
I don't know much about these things, maybe they're a bit too new and not supported properly everywhere yet? (then again, not even OLD HTML-standards are supported properly in half of the big browers, it seems)
I don't care much for this new layout; sure, it's nice to not have to click that full-bio button, but the window is too small for my liking. Plus, as someone already noted, if you're going to load all the text like that, you might just as well go with just plugging people directly to the old-school "full bio" page.

― Øystein Holm-Olsen (Øystein H-O), Monday, 14 July 2003 17:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Clearly you "don't know much about these things." Look at the code, it's a DIV, not an IFRAME. The header of the page is in an IFRAME, not the scrollable content region.

And don't worry, I suspect ol' AMG is working on making that DIV expandable.

― moosha, Tuesday, 15 July 2003 19:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I agree, eery as hell.

― Cacaman Flores, Tuesday, 15 July 2003 20:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I agree, eery as hell.

― Cacaman Flores, Tuesday, 15 July 2003 20:14 (twenty-two years ago)

They now recommend songs and have redesigned the pages for genres etc.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=MISS70307161607&sql=C2687

― Brandon, Wednesday, 16 July 2003 21:27 (twenty-two years ago)

That is sooooo damned cool.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 16 July 2003 22:21 (twenty-two years ago)

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