So, they finally did it :-(

amazing it got thru trials

"You finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

I say this with caution, but I actually think it's operating much better than it did a few weeks ago when they previously shut down the old site. Loading between markets in 'My Markets' actually seems quite crisp at the moment. My main problem was loading markets with 120+ runners when I had lots of unmatched bets (eg tennis or golf winners' markets). Yet to experience if it's running those markets better. I'm still sure a few bugs and general annoyances will manifest themselves as the hours and days go by.

Having said all that, found a bug within 2 minutes; can't cancel a single bet in a correct score market. It's telling me that 'The following bets could not be placed' in 'Unplaced Bets' with 'Receipt' at the top. WTF. It won't cancel the bet!!

Couldn't cancel any bet in the end using Chrome. Had to go to Mozilla, which is a bit slower, but at least works. Ridiculous. Whilst it does seem to be running a bit smoother, there are still huge fundamental problems with reliability after all this time.

romfordiron - I haven't managed to add a single market to favourites today. It was patchy when i tried it before; now it seems totally non-functional. Have you got any tricks for making it work?

Afraid not, apart from the obvious of restarting or changing browser. That part is working fine for me in both Chrome and Mozilla. I just couldn't cancel a single bet in Chrome. Mozilla seems to be working alright. Spoke to someone at HQ who could operate my account fine in Chrome. He said he'll speak to IT and get back to me. Crazy how certain bugs are affecting certain people and not others. Let us know if/when it gets sorted.

This site has clearly not been designed or overseen by people who regularly use the exchange in anything other than a recreational way.

That's the clincher for me. Either BF don't know how a range of people use their site, or purposefully trying to phase out certain spectra of their users.

As usual they took no heed and now the site is unusable.

Having to use API, but I find I'm missing upcoming games. Completely annoying as the obscure games are what I make money off.

Anyone found another option?

Darlo Bantam 15 Sep 15 16:57 
This site has clearly not been designed or overseen by people who regularly use the exchange in anything other than a recreational way.

That's the clincher for me. Either BF don't know how a range of people use their site, or purposefully trying to phase out certain spectra of their users.

1.05 the former with agile development methodology being the culprit. i'm sure the scrum master patted himself on the back nailing all the stories and thinks they've all done a wonderful job, but when you have a methodology that is prone toward quantising and uncoupling functionality so that it's easier for the dev and design team (particularly whoever is leader and managing it), the total solution will suffer.

as it so clearly has done here.

but I find I'm missing upcoming games.

Betfair have also - in their supreme wisdom - got rid of the coupons. I found them incredibly valuable. Don't know if this would help you, but it sounds like it. I've no idea why they got rid of such a vital tool.

Deleting cookies today supposedly speeds the  new site up as the old backdoor link slows the new site down.  Otherwise, just bombard them with emails and tweets.  Make their life a misery.

Darlo Bantam 15 Sep 15 16:57 Joined: 27 Mar 07 | Topic/replies: 24,016 | Blogger: Darlo Bantam's blog
This site has clearly not been designed or overseen by people who regularly use the exchange in anything other than a recreational way.

That's the clincher for me. Either BF don't know how a range of people use their site, or purposefully trying to phase out certain spectra of their users.
________________

everything is done for a reason  -the world works on psychology - similar to the dripping tap torture method

1.05 the former with agile development methodology being the culprit. i'm sure the scrum master patted himself on the back nailing all the stories and thinks they've all done a wonderful job, but when you have a methodology that is prone toward quantising and uncoupling functionality so that it's easier for the dev and design team (particularly whoever is leader and managing it), the total solution will suffer.

You are probably right. But I suspect an at least as big a cause is management wishlists of unimplementable functions that the dev team tried to implement the best they could. Agile development generally lacks analysts between management and developers. One of whose jobs is to rein in management bluesky thinking and to specify something doable.

And the performance problems, say f'ed database design, another typical AD problem.

all u guys r prob aware anyway, but there is a way to get the old site back, that is knocking around via PM...Thread on HR Forum for anyone who wants it, "final closure of classic site"..

They are plannig to do more...

to destroy.

Could someone please translate DStyle and pxb's posts into English?

What DStyle is saying, is that people who regularly use a website will do a sequence of things to achieve some over all result. In the case of a bf trader it will go something like this.

Find a market that fits their conditions for trading
Ascertain what prices to trade in and out at
Perform several trades while monitoring their net position to achieve an overall green position or whatever their objective is

The software development approach used by bf pretty much ignores these sequences, and focuses on each piece individually. Such that, rather than making these sequences as easy as possible (achievable with the least number of clicks), it allows you do these things but in a clunky and unintuitive way.

My comments were rather more of an insiders view of the software development process.

By way of background, I've read that the old site serviced more data requests than any other Oracle site in the world. A very impressive statistic for someone like me, who knows about these things. The developers of the old site knew what they were doing and did an excellent job.

When bf announced that they had redeveloped the back end, I thought this was bs. For the simple reason there was no need to. What I would change in the old site would be almost all extensions to what was there already. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that bf was telling the truth, and what they have produced in the redevelopment is inferior to what they had before, particularly in regards to performance (speed). Why I think that would require a technical explanation.

Hope this helps.

yep.

imagine if you want to build a house.

you get some builders in and tell them you need a house and it needs to have a bathroom, a dining room, a sitting room, a kitchen, three bedrooms and two toilets.

the builders get to work, and they concentrate on building one room at a time. they then proudly announce they've finished. all the correct appliances are in the right room and the fitted furniture in each room is entirely appropriate for its function.

except......

the dining room was built as an ensuite to the bathroom, which is on the first floor, the kitchen was in the attic accessible only by an escape ladder, the two loos were next to each other on the same floor, the sitting room is in the basement, and the first room you walk into when you enter the house is the master bedroom which has the stairs to the upper floors in it as well as adjoining doors to the two other bedrooms.

now as far as the builders are concerned you got just what you asked for, but that doesn't make your house liveable.....

the new site feels like lots of working bits of disparate functionality weakly glued together with little feel of how they fit together in order to provide the right experience for the heaviest users of the site.

(and the builders spent over half their time on site in meetings where they had to stand up and report on their progress)

Currently I have the daily in play coupon loaded with the silly orange banner turned off. Then have api(Geeks) open to navigate markets and place bets.

Anyone have a better work around?

CJ70, as an Australian, old site still works fine for me and long may it do so.

I work in an agile development environment. The project managers, in their wisdom, have now agreed that
a spec has to be signed off by the client before the dev team starts work. It took 3 years to come up
with that cunning plan.

Sep 17, 2015 -- 12:48PM, pxb wrote:

CJ70, as an Australian, old site still works fine for me and long may it do so.

No in play betting with an *.AU IP though?

Thanks for explaining.  I made the switch to the new site ages ago, as I was reliably informed by my account manager that the old site was being switched off "imminently".  That was probably about 30 months ago.

For what I do, it's made little material difference 99.9% of the time, but I'm amazed at how many bugs still exist.  I remember trying to lay Costa Rica against England in the World Cup and the refresh betslip function not working, as I thought I was unmatched, cancelled the bet, and then backed England and the draw at Pinnacle instead.  Mid-match discovered that my lay had been matched and had to dig myself out of a hole that would have seen me about 20k out of pocket had I not noticed.  That problem went on for ages and Betfair pretty much refused to acknolwedge it until a few others complained too.  Making the transition to the new site would have been much more palatable had there not been complete ignorance of any feedback.

I used to use the tennis coupons and it was great how you had a coupon for every tournament and the doubles matches were filtered out.  Can't do that any more unless I'm mistaken and it costs them loads of tennis revenue from me, as I find navigating the sports zones painful beyond words.

what's so weird is that the new API, which is what the new website is based on, has loads of really rich filter functionality but practically none of it is exposed on the website.

being able to easily create and save your own custom filters, name them, and then add them your own menu, would be a massive piece of value added functionality on the new site (i.e. you could create exactly the sort of personalised coupons you are talking about) but they've not done it.

The reason for the 4 hour logout is (I strongly suspect) the new site simply can't handle the volume of data requests the old site could. And the refresh rate of prices has been substantially increased to also decrease the data request load.

If I am right, there are no easy solutions to this, so don't expect the performance to significantly improve any time soon, or any time at all.

BTW do the third party products seem slower, since the introduction of the new site?

I use Gruss and it feels like it has been slower for the last few days - nothing serious just a fraction of a second slower.

The 4 hour logout is in play on the old site as well

In my experience, neither site actually tells you that you are logged out - you only find out when you want to place or cancel a bet and realize that nothing is happening - by which time you it is usually too late. Really both sites have been unusable for this reason for anybody who has the odd bet here and there

i'd be surprised if the 4 hour log out was to do with data request volumes given that it's only enforced if you've been inactive for 4 hours; the session is kept alive automatically if you remain active, unlike the API.

although GoBallistic is right: a little pop up window informing you that your session is dead, like the banking sites do, is hardly rocket science to implement.

i'd be surprised if the 4 hour log out was to do with data request volumes given that it's only enforced if you've been inactive for 4 hours; the session is kept alive automatically if you remain active, unlike the API.

While bots don't sleep, some of us humans do.

On the old site you could click on a specific selection from your "Matched" or "Unmatched Bets"
This would then take you directly into that selected market.

This doesn't happen on the new site. Is this the same for everyone?

It's the same for me Hans with the 'Current Bets' option. It works with the 'My Bets' option that's nowhere near as easy on the eye.

Thanks Andriy.
Just tried it.
No only is the view absolutely shocking and shows very few matched or unmatched bets.
But it also opens up a separate window every time you click on the selection.
So if you have lots of bets and need to jump from market to market quickly. You end up with multiple open windows.

Not fit for purpose for me. Another chunk of liquidity lost by Betfair

As a Kiwi I can still use the old site too. Brilliant

is there any way of getting rid of the feature where it tells you the score (often a couple of scores behind on the rugby) prominently?

Sep 23, 2015 -- 2:33AM, tyco161 wrote:

As a Kiwi I can still use the old site too. Brilliant

im in nz too, unfortunatly we cant access the sportsbook for live betting because we are lumped in geographically with australia so live betting on the net is not possible on the sportsbook at betfair, no problem anywhere else.........its great being able to place multis on games during the match on goals when a mass number of games are played at same time,thats a bit of a bummer really