Posted: 20-10-2022
Feature Request
We have implemented a better way of refreshing the page. Previously, when a new show was about to start the whole page automatically refreshed but we wanted to go one step further and only refresh the player itself which is now in place. A minute before a show starts (for example we are currently airing back to back past shows until 06:00am so at 05:59am) a green strip will appear right above the player with a countdown counting down from 60, this is to make you aware a new show is about to load. All of this will happen without the page itself needing to reload at all.
The main reason for this is because we have to refresh to maintain a constant cycle of music so there is always going to be an abrupt stop to the audio, which is sadly something we can’t prevent as we don’t have complete control over Mixcloud’s audio player, so giving you a heads up of a minute makes you aware the music will stop for a brief second whilst a new show loads.
Bug
As part of this, we have found a bug that occurs on mobile phones. Most browsers do not auto play music when a page is loaded on a mobile, this is just the way mobile browsers work unfortunately so you have to manually hit play when listening to SOF Radio on the app or through the site
We don’t see a problem with that but this causes another problem. By hitting Play on the player the browser sees that as an action you’ve taken and when the auto refresh as above kicks in, you will get a message asking you if you wish to Reload the page or Cancel as it thinks you’ve made some changes to the page. If you click ‘Reload’ the page will refresh and all is well, if you click ‘Cancel’ nothing will happen and you’ll eventually end up with no tunes (as the current show will eventually end) So clicking ‘Reload’ sorts it but this isn’t good user experience in our eyes so we have to fix this.
I think it’s a fairly small issue in comparison to everything we’ve built here but rest assured we will come up with a solution for that.
Stay tuned…
