FancyAZone7Pint?
My heart sinks when I see pub links sent to me via Beerintheevening.com. The whole name seems both derivative of the much more friendly Fancyapint, whilst wholly misunderstanding what makes a phrase like Fancy a Pint so friendly. More importantly I sometimes like beer at other parts of the day. On top of all of this, the Beerintheevening website is stupendously ugly, and cluttered up with punter reviews which might have come right out of a BBC website Talking Point. You get the drift, i don’t like Beerintheevening.com, and the only use of it I eve rhave is directing people to pubs not covered by Fancyapint. Which up until now has been pubs in Zone 7.
Well all of this may well change as Fancyapint, who previously have restricted their geographical bent to London, is embarking on a brave project to go outside of London (Fancyapint UK). At the moment they seem to have four in Glasgow, two pubs in Edinburgh and five in Brighton - which is not exactly expanding their stock. But they are looking for reviewers who can help: and whilst Fancyapint reviews have often been idiosyncratic, their ethos of what makes a good pub is closer to ours (and Pete Brown’s) than, say, CAMRA’s. Something to watch in 2007.
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Kat on January 5th, 2007
Alas FAP is blocked by my werk firewall. BITE strangely isn’t, despite having ‘beer’ in the URL. Who kno etc
Tom on January 5th, 2007
BITE’s map system is about a million times better, and since the only reason I ever use either site is to work out where a pub is, it wins.
FT's Sarah on January 5th, 2007
You lie, it’s banned at your work as well as you have moaned PLENTY OF TIMES. I’m with Pete on this one.
FT's Steve Mannion on January 5th, 2007
fancyapint is rubbish.
they are curmudgeons and need to sort out the problem of not being able to link directly to pub pages easily enough.
i don’t like BITE much either tho.
FT's Pete Baran on January 5th, 2007
Its no real bother open the pub in a new window and cut and paste the address .yes they could do this better but I like their sometimes opinionated capsule reviews, and they are more right than wrong.
Beer In The Evening is a hideous site, and the feedback chatwank is distracting and would drive me away from all pubs ever.
FT's Alan on January 5th, 2007
what’s this fuss about the maps? what could be better than a google map - which FAP uses. I agree with pete about BITE’s appearance and reviews.
however FRAMES?? fap - sort it out now - bad fap, naughty fap IN YOUR BED
FT's Steve Mannion on January 5th, 2007
‘Its no real bother open the pub in a new window and cut and paste the address ‘
as a web designer i consider this a cardinal sin. string ‘em up chief. also the frames thing that Alan points out. indefensible. BITE looks bad but is still better designed.
i’ll use both until there is something better.
FT's Tom on January 5th, 2007
Google Maps never used to work properly on my shitey old Work PC - now I have a new one it seems to, so I withdraw my map objection. I still don’t like Google Maps though, it looks really spartan somehow.
I am in the minority in liking the BITE feedback section - it is funny, if often misleading, and surely more geezaethetic than FAP’s ex cathedra reviews.
FT's Steve Mannion on January 5th, 2007
i don’t like Google Maps being used for things like FAP either. Streetmap provided more detail.
FT's Alan on January 5th, 2007
did i do good with the poptimism google map?
FT's Steve Mannion on January 5th, 2007
more superimposed pointing kittens needed
FT's Pete Baran on January 5th, 2007
Geezaetsthetics is about talking in the pub, not bitching about a pub in the comment section.
Yes, you are right about the frames of course, and I fear they have a “not broke, don’t fix it” view of this sin, but BITE just looks plain bad.
Clearly when FAP covers the whole country they will sriously need to rethink their interfaces. But i like their pint ratings, I like the snappy way all the things i need to know are on the site.
FT's Steve Mannion on January 5th, 2007
They both look as bad as each other, in the end, for different reasons. BITE would benefit from a sexier stylesheet (ala FT ;) and a little less infoblast - but technically and layout wise it’s fairly sound.
Pint glass ratings are cute but User Ratings perhaps more useful ultimately. Combining both would be the way forward.
FAP just crashed my browser when i tried to click on details for The Ship >:(