It seems a long time ago now. Anyone remember the "we've been listening" propaganda in August and September? That presaged the big redesign that introduced an unpopular new look for the site, in which some features were removed, others were hidden behind tabs and sub-menus, and those features that had been working were broken.
Eleven weeks on, most broken functions and features are still broken. It seems that the current development team may have got bored with their thankless task, because they are once again adding new features and breaking things as they go!
Every page of every guide now has seven new video tabs. If you are interested in shows that are more than five minutes old, or from outside the U.S., that means seven new tabs each carrying the message "There are currently no videos." Thanks for sharing. Most of the guides I edit are so far off the corporate radar that the "There are currently no stories.", "There are currently no photos." and "There are currently no dvd for [show name]" already provide enough excitement.
This being TV.com, every new feature means more missing and broken links and loss of features, and the price to pay for the video tabs is a loss of the season dropdown list. If you want to access an episode, you have to access a list of every episode. That can be a pain if you happen to be visiting or editing a guide for a show with hundreds or thousands of episodes.
I read that someone is looking at the new problem. This being TV.com, no developer can or will simply reinstate a removed function, but we are liable to get a new way of accessing episodes or seasons in due course. Or maybe not.
As I recall, TV.com developers fixed most of the problems with v2.5 within three months or so. Other outstanding issues were left unfixed, and are now abandoned. Progress this time has been much much slower. I worry, therefore, that the other remaining issues from v3.0 are likely to remain unfixed when v4.0 is rolled out in summer or fall 2009. This all got me thinking. If the Technical Support forum is for things that were broken before mid-September, and the Redesign Feedback forum is for things that were broken eleven weeks ago, do we need a third forum for things that will be broken post-redesign?