IE 9 Compatibility Issue Fixed

I just noticed that there were some minor display issues with the landing pages (Home, About GP etc.) on Golf Predictor with IE 9. This was only noticed today as, up until now, I haven't been checking those pages often and I use IE even less often! Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom (according to a Google search), appear to have messed with the display of certain fonts in the latest incarnation of their browser. This includes the font used on Golf Predictor and it had the effect of reducing the size of the text. This in turn altered the layout of the pages, causing some pop-ups to appear less than perfectly (e.g. outside the bounds of the content area). This issue also meant the drop down menu was too narrow on the top of each landing page.

Happily, this issue has been corrected without the need for separate pages for a particular browser or having to juggle text to get it to work on multiple browsers. Apologies to any IE affectionados out there - I will certainly be more vigilant for future releases, although the fix should prevent any such issues from occurring.

Slight Issue And Workaround

There is currently an issue on Golf Predictor for all users with "US" selected in their profile as the default tour ('Default Tour 2' field only). This issue will result in an error if users try and access most of the prediction pages on the "Stats Analysis" menu in the member section.

This is happening because there are no 2011 US Tour predictions in the system as yet, but there is a Euro Tour prediction since last Monday. This is causing an error when displaying the page with US tour as the default tour. Unfortunately, due to travel and work commitments, I may not be fix the issue until next week.

The workaround in the meantime is to change your 'Default Tour 2' profile field to "Both" for the time being, which allows you to see the pages. You will also get to see the European PGA Tour events too for the moment, but you can manually set the tour filter until I am able to fix the issue. I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Blog Back Up!

The Golf Predictor blog was inexplicably down for a while this week. This was due to the DNS settings spontaneously combusting! The situation was rectified as soon as possible, but unfortunately these settings can take up to a day to take effect.

The blog seems to be back up running again now. I suspect the site hosts caused this issue, which hopefully won't be repeated. I apologise for any inconvenience caused during the week of the British Open Championship.

Most AJAX Functionality Removed from sIte

Unfortunately, I have had to remove almost all of the AJAX functionality temporarily from Golf Predictor. I noticed that the use of AJAX on the main pages messed up the back button navigation on the site. As this navigation is very important to Golf Predictor usability, I reluctantly had to remove AJAX from the affected pages.

This is a known issue with AJAX but there are solutions available. Unfortunately, due to matters beyond my control, I are unable to implement the solution at this juncture. I hope to be able to rectify this at some point in the near future. In the meantime, we have reverted back to non-AJAX pages, except for the Tournament Locations and Golfers pages.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused, but at least Golf Predictor still has the same great content!

Scripts Used in Golf Predictor

You must have JavaScript enabled on your browser for Golf Predictor to work properly. For those of you worried about web security and/or using script blockers, this is a list of what JavaScript is used for on the site:

1. AJAX for partial page updating and a more responsive website.
2. Trapping AJAX request time outs and reloading the page if they occur.
3. The Twitter Bootstrap dropdown menus (across the top of every page), pop- up chart windows and collapsible panels.
4. Highlighting the currently selected page in the appropriate menu.
5. Displaying all the radial dials, charts and Google Maps on the site.
6. Displaying the Golf Predictor Twitter feed widget. 
7. Google Analytics, for tracking web site usage statistics.
8. To protect email addresses on the Contact Us page from spammer harvesting.
9. To prevent more than 10 golfers being selected on the 'Compare' pages.
10. To prevent more than 3 golfers being selected on the 'Field Rankings (Summary)' page.
11. A third party site runs a script on the "Golfer Odds" page to display the odds for the selected tournament. 
12. To show the sliders on pages such as the 'Custom Predictions', 'Filtered Predictions' and 'DFS Lineup Builder (DraftKings)' pages and to provide validation for them and the associated text boxes.
13. To create a DFS lineup and export it to a CSV on the 'DFS Lineup Builder (DraftKings)' page.

This is the complete list to the best of my recollection. I will update it if I add or remember more. As you can see, not much script is used on the site and a significant portion of the script is used is for third party functionality. Note that the site does not (and never will) run any malicious code in your browser. So, if you are using a script blocker, please allow Golf Predictor. You will get a message on screen if JavaScript is not enabled on your browser for any reason.

Golf Predictor Technology Makeover

We are very excited to announce the addition of AJAX technology to Golf Predictor. This will make the site more responsive for all users. AJAX allows the partial updating of a web page and you can continue to interact with the page while the data is loaded in the background.

In Golf Predictor, this means that when you select a new season, tour or tournament from a drop down box, instead of a full page reload (as was the case up until now), just the part of the page with the information (e.g. data table or map) will be updated. This should make Golf Predictor even better to use. If it isn't instantaneous, an updating message and graphic will appear on the page during the partial update.

You must have JavaScript enabled on your browser for AJAX to work. You already need this for Golf Predictor (for the menu and charts), so that is not an issue. Occasionally a partial page update request may time out. If such a time out occurs, you will be alerted and the page automatically reloaded. Often this is due to a transient network problem and you can simply try again.

We hope this major enhancement will add to your browsing experience. Please contact us immediately if you experience any problems on the site.

Site Database Problem - Solved

We are pleased to announce that the database problem has righted itself. We suspect that it was a one off problem associated with a web host system upgrade.

Site Database Problem

It appears that the Golf Predictor database is suddenly inaccessible for some unknown reason. We are working to resolve this urgent problem which is an issue with the web site host.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Google Chrome and Apple Safari Browser Compatibility

We here at Golf Predictor downloaded the beta release of the new Google Chrome browser to see how our site looked in it. To our surprise, our menus didn't display correctly, thereby rendering Golf Predictor practically unusable to such browser users. As Chrome is based on the same open source project as the Apple Safari browser, we then downloaded that only to find the same problem. As Google are shamelessly plugging this new high speed, bloat free browser on many of its web sites, we figured we better fix this problem pronto!

Oh, the joy of multiple browser compatibility! The reason why the menus didn't render correctly is a known issue and not a programming error as such (perish the thought!). In any event, the workaround was surprisingly complex, but we persevered. Now, the menus in Safari and Chrome work in a similar manner to those in the other supported browsers. We apologise to any users of Safari who had problems accessing our site in the past.

Change in Historical Statistics

We have decided here at Golf Predictor to tweak the way historical tournaments (events held on the same course/at the same tournament) affect future tournament predictions. Henceforth, there will be a sliding 5 year window of historical data used (i.e. the previous five years) rather than the complete historical data in the database. This was done for 2 main reasons:

1. The further back you go, the less relevant results are. To give an extreme example, 3 time champion, the 72 year old Gary Player still plays at the Masters, but he hasn't a prayer of winning again! We reckon 5 years is a good cut off point.
2. Leading on from above, as the years go by, the processing demands will increase and Golf Predictor would possibly have to buy a Cray supercomputer to sift through the ever less relevant data!

The changes will have no effect on this year's predictions as our records begin in 2003. From next year though, the 5 year historical window will begin in 2004 and so on for future years.

Site Issues Resolved

Golf Predictor seems to be back to its brilliant best!

We're not sure what the issue was, but we suspect our initial feeling was correct!

Possible Intermittent Connection Problems

Apologies users, if you have been affected, but the site appears to be experiencing intermittent connection difficulties today. We were guaranteed 99.9% uptime, but it looks like the 0.1% is happening today!

I'm 99.9% sure the fault lies with our hosting company, not with your ever reliable Golf Predictor! Rest assured, we are applying the pressure to get this sorted as soon as possible.

Intermittent Issue Fixed

One of our subscribers reported an issue yesterday with main "Tourn. Predictions" screen (Member section - Stats Analysis menu). After logging in, the member was told that he was not subscribed and the logged in user name changed to another user.

This problem was caused by the caching of the web page on the server. If a subscriber happened to log in after an unsubscribed member, this situation could occur with most of the pages in the member section. We have changed the caching (which is used to boost performance of the site) to use the client (your browser) for caching, so this should not happen again. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Incidentally, there was a workaround. Selecting another tournament from the drop down list and then selecting the top entry seemed to resolve the problem.

Prediction Algorithm Upgrade

We are constantly monitoring and tweaking our prediction algorithm here at Golf Predictor. Our latest upgrade will result in markedly higher winning possibility percentages for golfers in most tournaments.

As this change is so noticeable we thought we'd mention it. We've changed the world ranking component to increase its effectiveness in most tournaments. It should hopefully result in more accurate predictions for you, our loyal users.

Minor Prediction Algorithm Fix

Alert users will spot slightly different overall rankings for golfers in the prediction views today. While dealing with the St. Omer Open entry list issue, a slight problem was spotted with the calculation of the current form (last 5 event performance) element of the prediction algorithm.

Since this effected almost every golfer equally, it does not really effect the overall prediction rankings. The exception were those few golfers with an exceptional recent record (e.g. Tiger Woods), who gained more from the fix. All predictions in Golf Predictor have been updated.

Week Numbers

I should have explained the week number concept earlier. Since tournaments are held on a weekly basis, with anything from zero to three tournaments held on any given week between the US and European tours, it made since to introduce the week number.

This was done at the beginning of the Golf Predictor development and allows for easy tournament sorting and more convenient blog updates, among other things! Week one is the first week of the season with a tournament, which happens to be in the previous year, thanks to the quirks of the European tour, which usually starts its season in November of the wrong year and on the wrong continent!! Weeks with no individual tournaments (e.g. over Christmas) are excluded from the week count.

As an interesting aside, I believe that the 'European' tour has hosted events on every continent bar North America and Antarctica. As for completing the set, the former is obviously ruled out for political reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the South Pole Open on the schedule in future years!

New Blog Host

We have moved the blog back to Blogger for hosting in order to provide a better experience for you, our users. Previously, we published via ftp to the Golf Predictor host, but this limited the design and layout of the blog significantly.

Thanks for your patience during the change over.