HWS-template (WD34) beta test July version

Thanks Wim, that fixes it on mobile

First, congratulations to everyone for getting the W34 templates up and running. Being a WeatherDisplay user, I’m particularly happy to see this version available. I’ve been running WeatherOLA using the Saratoga templates since 2011 and have often struggled with offering a version focused on delivering weather information to mobile devices. The W34 templates fill that role and now that the July version is mostly responsive, weather information is displayed formated and closer to optimal for various mobile devices.

After following the threads for both the April and July versions, I see that there’s been some discussion about the visual design about W34 as used by WeatherDisplay and other weather station software. Since I have both the April and July versions up and running, I have a few comments and a question. Let me start first by confessing that I’m a career graphic designer with decades of experience and well practiced skillset in online/user experince (UX) design. With said, I have a few comments from a visual professional’s point of view. Please understand, that good design is not about various opinions, it’s using a skill set. There are reasons why good design works. I’m just trying to help.

There are number of problems with the April verion, but since the July version is upon us, I’ll focus on that. Skipping past important scale-to-use issues of panel contents and focusing on the larger overall changes from April to July versions, some of the biggest changes are the thin outlined borders added to panel and much of the content contained. From a good design stand point, the added borders are a big problem. Unlike a slight contrast change between panel headers and panel boxes which would have been a major improvement, the outlines add a huge visual distraction and make the July version a big step backwards from the April version. The result in the July version is far less readable on computer screens, tablets are particulary phones and creates some major user interface problems with data points now boxed.

Once, I loaded the July version and many of its improvements and noticed all the jarring visual changes, I hoped that I might be able to change everything back to the April version by subsituting the early CSS files. I had hoped that I’d use that starting point to make a number of other user interface improvements to improve scaling issues. Unfortunaley, swapping out the CSS does not work.

I noticed an earlier discussion about changing from the highlighted circles to the highlighted squares in the different versions (there are much better ways to make important information more readable on both large screens and small screens) but this problem with the outlined box shapes is more immediate. The W34 design is atrtactive and could be much improved by applying other good design methods, but the thin outlines of the boxes and data are a mistake. Since I can’t seem to find the settngs to comment out or make changes in the CSS, where can a graphic designer go to make serious changes to the W34 templates?

Again, thanks for all your work on this project. Very much appreciated. It’ great to have a simple soltuon for mobile uses.

For WD there are about 5 different versions. Some over 3 years old. They all look different, their code is also often very different. You can make serious changes to any of these released and or abandoned versions. Multiple users are doing that and making their own private version of it. And they give their improvements back to the community so others can benefit.
Also this July version will, at its release, contain the css in a separate file. Then anyone can change anything they like.

But this is a beta version
The css is NOT in a separate file as I change it often and I want to have the html/css validated.
My sole focus is to have as much as possible all PHP/HTML/CSS errors removed before final release in July.

If beta-testers are changing the code/css and there is an error it becomes very difficult to pinpoint the error and remove it.
But if you “right-click → inspect” you can see the css for any object. Removing /changing the border colours is only a one line change.

Wim


Thanks for your reply, Wim. And, again thank you for all your work on the project.

I do know and understand ways to inspect and modify elements and code and can track down panel outlines, etc. Just looking for ways to modify the design globally and perhaps more radically to solve the more major design issues with W34. Per your suggestion, I will wait for the final release to take on the final CSS settings.

Thanks again!

I sincerely hope that, if you find solutions for these

  1. very important “more major design issues with W34”,
  2. number of problems with the April verion
  3. important scale-to-use issues of panel contents
  4. the outlines add a huge visual distraction and make the July version a big step backwards from the April version.
  5. the July version is far less readable on computer screens, tablets are particulary phones
    and that is a small list from your post

I think you look more as one of those black-hole users, they write long exposes mentioning their briljant decades long work, telling that they only “want to help” , but only mention nothing other then unspecified “problems”.

So I doubt you let other users benefit and give something back to the community.
Checking your posts: none since 2013. Also no links to your briljant graphical designed websites from which we could learn a lot?

Just wasting the time of a programmer who have to read all posts and answer those posts.

Wim

Wow. A lof of generalization and assumptions in your reply. Basing your response on my lack of posts on the WXforum and other experiences you may have had with so-called designers are hardly reasons for your unfortunate response. Rather than evaluate the tone and admiration I was expressing about your work, you’ve cosen another route. Practically speaking, a short discusion in a weather forum is hardly the place to judge what kind of design skill set, I may or may not have. The point being, you really don’t know what I’m capable of and rather than inquiring, encouragng more input or waiting to find out, instead chose to use the few posts I’ve made on wxforum and focused in on incomplete comments I made as just more snark and from a unqualified, unwilling to help amatuer. Look, since my own weather site has been stable for a long time and I never change it, I rarely visit wxfurm. So, I don’t know what kind of problems you’ve had with other people but to just generalize and make assumptions about someone you don’t know can often lead to wrong conclusions.

The short comments I made about design and UI issues did not offer solutions. In the short term that was not my intention. I would have followed up in more detai, but for now, I just was looking for a simple way to turn off a few details in my own installation that are high up on my list. It’s important to note that I’m a designer not a programmer as you are. These are very different roles. As a designer, from experience I know that taking on the larger design issues of both the original and derivative WD34 projects would make for a decent size voluteer project to get involved in. Looking through the project and reading through all the posts and particularly admiring the way you’ve gracefully handled various issues, bugs and problems as they’ve come up had built up my interest enough to actually consider volunteering to take on an active role as an experienced designer to help. Now that I have a little more free time, I try to help on various design projects. That the WD34 design is modular and heirical makes serious design changes reasonable. There’s plenty of potentional to improve the user experience, particularly on mobile devices. I even showed it to my wife, also a career graphic designer, and she agreed. Anyway, that was this morning. This is now.

At this point, there are a few thiings I suspect that we can agree on: 1) Don’t waste any more of your time on this. Keep focused on the excellent and universally appreciated programming and scripting work that you’re doing to make WD34 work on other platforms. 2) This is not the best place for me to volunteer as a graphic designer.

As before, your work is very much appreciated. l wish you the best.

I Have found that gifs invoked by the menu are more responsive on mobile if I remove the “$frm_type[$frame] = ‘img’;” tag from the frames page.

With the img tag in place the gifs are cropped and locked (immovable). Without the img tag images are cropped but movable, to facilitate seeing part of the image off screen on initial display.

You can experience this by checking my menu. The #2 & #3 items in extras “Metro Radar” & “Metro Radar1” are coded both ways. The drawback is that the images are no longer “centered” on wider formats (PC, or Tablet).

This was on Android:
Samsung S8

@weatherola
you might have caught Wim at a bad time
hang in there :slight_smile:

Thank you :D, I overlooked this one when making the scripts responsive

The code for the image was

<img src="https://sirocco.accuweather.com/nx_mosaic_640x480_public/sir/inmasirmr_msp.gif" height="480"
    alt="metro_radar1" style="max-width: 950px; margin: 0 auto;">              

The code should have been

<img src="https://sirocco.accuweather.com/nx_mosaic_640x480_public/sir/inmasirmr_msp.gif" 
    alt="metro_radar1" style="max-width: 950px; margin: 0 auto; height: 480px;">

The height=“480” on the item makes it non-responsive and adds scrollbars.

Wil change the script after further testing, attach a screenshot how it “had to” look

Wim


A new beta version can be downloaded => http://wd34.weather-template.com/beta.php

The discussed points in this topic should nearly all be included:

  • WiFi logger and Weatherlink.exe support
  • Better handling of menu items
  • Better nextstorm and weatherflow lightning support
  • Improved notifications

I think I will roll-out the July release as early as June 21. My wife and I planned our vacation for the last two weeks of July.
Gives you and me three full weeks to check if there are no new errors creeping up.

Again, thanks for all the feedback, :smiley:
Wim


Wim,
I have downloaded the latest version. You can see it at https://www.shermanctweather.org/pwsTEST/
It’s working fine for me. Getting easier to setup.
Thanks for all the hard work you’ve put into this.
Tom

I downloaded the beta template, but I can’t set it up on my site as it is asking for a password. Previously, with the first installation, you could leave the password blank to enter “easyweahtersetup.php”, then once on that page you could setup your password. Is there an initial password that we are to use for the beta template??

here is the link: Easyweather setup

The initial password is “12345”

You better get on there and change it, because anyone can enter your setup as it is now, using “12345”.

Thanks!!!

Very cool. I got my beta station working.

www.rrogers.us/pws07

Beta works great,

Thanks Wim

Wim,

Just an FYI.

I noticed that all pop-up charts showing “Today” data show 24 hr time, though the rest of the site shows 12 hr time (as per my selection). Not sure if that is easy to fix globally or not.

Thanks

Will be fine to include Belgium selection in the setup with the correct flag. Attached the little update.
Regards
Roland


w34_menu.zip (4.95 KB)

I do not understand. There is no “Belgian” language

@all For non-Belgians, I try to explain:
We “Belgians” use as language either Dutch, French or German, but we are all Belgian with 1 Belgian flag.
Same as Canadians who use English or French with 1 Canadian flag.

In the settings the website-owner selects the default language and he/she can remove the language selection from the menu also.

if allowed by the website owner, website visitors can, in the menu, select a language. IMHO that should not be switched off for Belgian websites.

In the bottom area the country flag is displayed which is different from the language for Belgium and for a lot of multi language countries also. The country flags are there for all countries who do not “own” the language, such as Canada for English and French.

To not make a new easyweather-setup entry every time, I decided to have 1 extra code for those countries like Belgium or Canada.

@on4rm
Feel free to modify the scripts and enhance as you like. It is your website.
But posting / discussing without a link to your website makes it difficult to see the differences.

Wim

I did not include the “round” option, nor the “noborders” option in yesterdays download.
I did today, so if interested, download again http://wd34.weather-template.com/beta.php
Those two choices can now be set in the easyweather but they remain for fast testing as URL-params also.

square + borders: http://wd34.weather-template.com/pws07/
round + borders: http://wd34.weather-template.com/pws07/?round
round no borders: http://wd34.weather-template.com/pws07/?round&noborders
square no borders: http://wd34.weather-template.com/pws07/?noborders

Wim

P.S. With “round no borders” (the left part of three in the image) it looks more similar to the april release.
The middle part is the default setting. The right part has only the borders removed from the texts.