All Music Guide "Improvements"

Yeah, it's pants now isn't it. Timed out about three times trying to get one discography and far slower than the old vesion - I'm sure I got the old version only yesterday so maybe there are a few teething problems - at least I hope so.

Simon

Yeah I noticed its a Beta version. I have E-Mailed AMG.

Yes, it's slow, but if they can manage to fine-tune it for a proper (non-beta) version it'll be much better. The layout's much improved and you can sort discographies according to year of first release, title, label etc.

Thomas

Thomas
Can you get any searches working? If so how do know they are being proccessed?

Howard

Howard,

Yes, I was able to do searches (even without registering), but that was earlier today -- don't remember if I saw any indication of status. Just tried again and it seems to be much slower now, or resulting in this:

We apologize for the temporary connection delay.
Please click the refresh button on your browser.

Perhaps their server is buckling under the strain.

Thomas

Thanks Thomas

The "music maps" seem to be gone . Crazy though they seemed, I actually liked them -- and found some interesting stuff using them.

Yes the old format was perfect - worked fast and reliably.

The new format is messy and slow.

I suggest we all e-mail them and tell them that it is now panties!

Mailed them about 14:20 no response yet, guess the mail handler runs slow as well
The changes were at the behest of the users apparently.
Didn't ask me.

Howard

Oh dear, what have they done?

Why fix something if it is not broken?

Heaven help anyone on a dial up connection.

Not impressed.

Mike

Give them time, I think once the teething problems are sorted it'll be a better resource (it's already much faster than it was yesterday -- apparently traffic doubled owing to everyone checking out the new site).

AMG's response to all your nagging

Thomas

"Page not found, please try again"

Mike

Forget about the link I posted above -- they've taken the page out again. Everything's working fine from where I'm sitting, BTW!

Thomas

I still can't get the search to work from a browser but it now updates from Music Collector!

Howard

It's still buggered. I've even tried registering, and it still doesn't work.

I've e-mailed my thoughts.

Let's wait and see.

JN I hope you have more luck with E-Mail than I have 2 mails unanswered now about 3 weeks since sending.
Are you using Norton AV/etc? I was wondering if that may be stopping it working properly.

Howard

Howard; Yes - I have an e-mail response:-

We apologize for any difficulty you've encountered while logging in to the new allmusic.com. We experienced a temporary glitch in the propagation of user information across all of our servers which caused intermittent logging in problems for some users. The problem has been corrected and you should now have full access to allmusic.

If you continue to experience problems with logging in or with searching or clicking on links, we suspect that the difficulty is caused by either a browser incompatibility issue or incompatible user settings. Please review the information below:

For Mac users:

If you are on OS X, the Safari browser provides access to the majority of the functionality of the allmusic site.

If you are on OS 9, we recommend using Netscape 7 for Macs which has been shown to handle the new allmusic site well.

Check out this site for Netscape 7:

http://www.netscape.ca/browsers/7/download/index.jsp

IE for Mac is unfortunately not supported and may not permit logging in, clicking on links, or search functionality. This is based upon Microsoft's cease of support and phasing out of IE for Mac.

We have had a few of reports of difficulties using the site through IE for Windows, or other major PC browsers such as Mozilla. We have invariably found that the cause is individual computer settings. There are several potential solutions that users have reported have fixed their problems:


1. Make sure you are using the latest version of IE. The new allmusic is optimized for Internet Explorer 5.5 and above for Windows.

2. Enable Java Scripting. By modifying your IE security settings, you may have disabled java script which makes some parts of the site non-functional. If you have changed from the default settings, you probably need to enable java scripting. Choosing default security levels of Low, Medium-Low or Medium will enable Java scripting. High security level disables scripting. To change this:

1. Open Tools -> Internet Options

2. Click the Security tab

3. Click on the Internet world icon

5. Click on Custom Level

6. Find the section called Scripting

7. Under Active scripting, click the Enable button

8. Click OK

3. Adjusting your security settings. We have had a number of users tell us that they discovered their problem was caused by having "disable advertisement in your page" setting enabled in their Norton Security program. Additionally, disable the script blocking feature on your Norton antivirus system.

4. Making allmusic a "trusted site"

1. Open Tools -> Internet Options

2. Click the Security tab

3. Click Trusted sites

4. Click Sites button

5. Type in http://www.allmusic.com, click Add

6. Click OK

5. Make sure your computer is set to accept cookies (Internet Options/Tools/Privacy)

6. Delete Temporary Internet Files

1. Open Tools -> Internet Options

2. Click Delete Cookies

3. Click Delete Files

4. Click OK

For latest news regarding technical issues please visit the 'Technical Difficulty FAQ' page within our Help Center link at the upper right of the allmusic.com page.

Best Regards,

AMG

JN any sucess? My PC seems to be set as they say.
To anyone else thats working OK, what indication do you get after starting a search that it is searching?
Does the search come up as a new page or a pop up?

Thanks

Howard

Thanks Nick as I thought I get no progress bar. I'll try another e-mail but suspect I'll get the same message as JN.

Howard

Finally got the search function to work on the new AMG. This suggestion did for me, hope this might help others. It was mentioned in a earlier post with a bunch of others. I'm very happy to have it working again, I was on AMG withdrawal. :-O

Thanks,
John

-----------------------------------------------
3. Adjusting your security settings. We have had a number of users tell us that they discovered their problem was caused by having "disable advertisement in your page" setting enabled in their Norton Security program. Additionally, ensure the the "script blocking" feature is disabled in your Norton antivirus software.

[This message was edited by John Gilleran on Sun 08 August 2004 at 3:33.]

At last! Sorted at last it was Norton AV/Ad blocker. I thought I had ruled it out earlier but another attempt to allow AMG seems to have worked.
Thanks for all your suggestions.

Howard