My morning routine usually consists of a quick check through my bank account and then a trip over to the Racing Post website to see if there are any selections for the day.
Now until today this was an easy task – I would simply log onto the site, choose the course and then click “view all races on one page”.
The site would then give me all the runners for the day and the betting forecast for each race so I could scan through them all and quickly pick out any races that matched the criteria I am looking for.
Unfortunately they’ve thrown away that useful site and sometime over the last 24 hours have published a new “good looking” site which isn’t easy to navigate.
First of all, during the day I use my work’s proxy for connection to the internet. And I also use the Opera web browser. Together, these made navigating the RP website pretty much impossible.
The new site is much more resource intensive it seems – and my poor net connection and incompatible browser were causing timeouts.
No problems, I thought, I’ll switch to Internet Explorer and see if that helps.
No luck – the RP website informs me that I need to use IE7 to access their site. I guess they are happy to block a huge proportion of internet users who are still using IE6 and below.
So, I can’t get the site to work all morning and miss three races.
Disappointing.
Now you may be saying – “quit complaining Ben, the site’s free to use”
Fair enough, I shouldn’t expect bells and whistles for nothing but I do contribute in my own way.
For example, if I am signing up for a new bookmaker, I will try and go through the Racing Post’s links so they get some commission. It’s the least I can do to say thanks for such a great source of racing info.
However, I feel I’m going to get tire very quickly of seeing the following ‘loading’ image each day:
Edit: Perhaps I was a little premature with my criticism. I’ve just logged on and I see that my “view all races on one page” selection is available again:
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The new Racing Post website does have lots of problems – to the visitor! – but then there is nothing new in this. The Racing Post people often “do a revamp” to “add new features”, but although the pages always look great, they somehow forget that real people actually use them! – and time and time again functionality is lost
Fortunately – they usually do get it right in the end, but it takes time. You might wonder why they keep doing this – the answer is simple to make more money. Most of the links on the pages are actually affiliate links, so if you click anything that takes you to another website, you can be sure you are making the Racing Post a “nice little earner”
Now I have found a couple of problems that we will all have to live with:
1. The system for displaying racing cards is very memory intensive
When you view a racing card – especially when you view lots of racing cards – the system eats up the memory on your computer, and unless you close down the browser completely, the pages load slower and slower and slower – eventually it comes to a grinding halt, so there is no alternative but to close everything down
2. The printer friendly cards page/link is gone
It is no longer possible to print the page off in a printer friendly version. This is a pity, as I for one, liked to save the card for future reference. A the end of the day when the results are in you can check back to see if there were any clues in the card about the winners – ir indeed losers
3. The default for the results is set for todays date
This can be a nisance when you come to the site early in the morning and want yesterdays results – well you can’t have yesterday, because the default changes after midnight to today. Surely it would be common sense that up until noon midday, when you click on results, you must want yesterdays results. So you have to select yesterday to get the results you want
4. The 6am Update!
If you use the website at 6am, be careful, because the people at the Racing Post do all their upgrades at 6am! You can be quite happily reading the cards, and then BANG, everything has gone..Why? because it is the 6am update which means you are suddenly kicked off! You have been warned!
Comment by tim fulcher — 15th December 2008 @ 7:29 pm
i find they put the results on then two mins later they take them off also the prices fail to be shown then all prices dissapeare lots of issuses lets go back to the old site it worked perfectly
Comment by colin arliss — 9th April 2010 @ 7:35 pm