I just noticed that at 52 degrees F (11 - 13 degrees C) that the shade of green is almost invisible against the background of the tube. But on my desktop, it is ok. Both are lcd displays, but my viewsonic has more contrast than the viao laptop. But in general, more contrast would help make it easier to read. Now that it seems so stable, you must have nothing else to do with all your talents but start tweaking it.
Personally, however, I like the simple functionality it has now. Extra links, graphs, etc. are for us to put around the display. WD live is best for it’s animation. And it does look slick. I think we all like it.
Regarding stability (in the ability to load the clientraw.txt file), I have been e-mailing friends to get them to try it to see if they have any problems. Work PC’s, etc have restrictions, firewalls, etc. that may cause it to not work. Will let you know.
Yup, this is a real Gem for weather display!!!
And, things are looking real sweet
I hope he gets lots of sales (I mean at 20$ its a bargain), and maybe I will get a few more WD sales too, you never know.
Julian is away with the famdamily over easter
Let me say, I have tons of respect for Brian and his work as well as Julian’s Flash program.
I do believe that having a few more features for this WDL is the smart way to go for both authors.
First off…I will be the first to admit…Im lost with all the “ticks” to make something appear online on WD…Its an awesome program and is loaded to the gills with options for this chart and that map…but its abit overwhelming to get everything to jive if your new to the software…Guys and gals that have
been uploading say…200 of his updates over the years it may be a piece of cake…but…in the long run…uploading all these graphs chews away at bandwidth. WD should be the home users weather station while WDL should be the Flashy internet side of the WD and WDL project.
I do understand that alot of these graphs prob cant be created with the clientraw.txt file that is available now…but I believe its prob the best way to go against the competitors…If that is what these 2 guys would like to capture… Lots and lots of new 17 yr olds and 40 yr olds that are into weather and you guys have a better price point that the other competition.
I don’t believe it would be a heck of an increase in the .swf file to add a
option of say a combo graph for a 30 minute (or whatever minute) chart of say pressure /temp/dewpoint +/-… Yes the live wind chart is mint…
Brian has worked hard at all the live or olose to realtime gif animations,
but this is the fastest way and since about 97-98% of all browsers run flash with ease or is built right into the browser its by far the coolest way
to present live weather…
Keep up the great work guys…
Have a nice Easter
PS…Brian… WD needs a WD Lite version for people like me :)( or newbies)
Weather Display is a monster of a program…Not hard to run but
loaded with hundreds of features to sort out…
The problem with using WDLive for graphing is that it is designed for real time, not history. I see no need to run it on my WD computer. It is for remote users to see my weather station live. Watch the spinning dials. Maybe view it for 5 minutes and then leave. In order to have meaningful graphs, they would need to leave it run constantly to continue to gather data from the clientraw.txt file. (Dont want to make that file too big given the fact that we are transferring it every 5 seconds) A 30 minute graph is next to usless. What kind of history would it be able to show? If the temperature or barometer change that much in a short period of time, you had one heck of a front come through!. So I don’t see a need for additional graphs.
Now, additional animation or dials, maybe. Give it the look of a traditional wall mounted weather station with dials for barometer, temperature, etc. (I guess a rain “thermometer” makes more sense, kind of like a clear tube on the deck with inches/mm on it and the ability to see it from the house)
Of course, this is just my “humble” opinion… :grab:
Well to tell you the thruth I would rather watch the screen of WDL than watch the screen of WD on my side my side systems…I do think there is a place for what stays on WD and what gets uploaded…
As for being a overwhelming bandwidth problem like you say with clientraw.txt file…I dont believe so…Now it was just an idea about
maybe producing a graph for say 15-30 minutes…does it have to
be created live? This might and should become a joint effort of the two
authors…A flash popup of a graph that is in the same design of WDF
could be usefull…AND YES…WHEN I LOOK AT A GRAPH of say 30 minutes and I see a wind shift or pressure falling 0.03 digits and temp falling…I can get an idea… I know a running live 30 minute graph is not practical…but
I never said live!!!(and if i did…not what i meant
I believe the dials and colors are excellent the way they are,maybe the degrees under the compass should be added and prob room for a link to a
graph of somekind…or more options for us to add or remove down the road…
thats all…
I speak my mind for what i believe is best for the authors…they work real hard at putting this software together…I just feel with ambient as
the leader in the flash display…its a great opportunity for Brian to get
more customers and Julian to score with a great flash design .
i do have data in the clientraw.txt file of the last 20 current windspeed readings…and Julian did use that initialy for the graph, but then he used a storage system within WDL,…and i think he could do a similar thing for say temperature and barometer, rain ,etc…but as rpreus points out, that storage in wdl only builds up as you watch it,
but if it was stored in the clientraw.txt filem, then it would work…but that would increase the size of that file a bit…but maybe only say each minute data of temperature for the last 20 minutes,…thats just 20 numbers,…and same for rainfall and barometer…
it could work…
I switched from using the last 20 readings that are stored in the clientraw file to gradually building up the data and putting it into an array simply so that I could have more control over it - but there is no reason why other values couldn’t be put into the clientraw file as suggested. It should work fine although you don’t want to make the clientraw file too big as it’ll just be slower and use more bandwidth.
must be good to come back from a easter getaway Julian and there are no bugs or problems reported!
I did have one person that had trouble with a URL that a _ in the URL…he had to shift all the files closer to the root url…
i will add in these data arrays, and see how much bigger that makes the file…
actauly, some weather stations only update the barometer every 15 mintues…so i think we can forget that one
but rain…thats a good one,…if its raining
so:
i think:
temperature /windspeed/rain
last hour
but only 10 data points in the array for each one…i.e every 6 minutes spaced out data points …to get the last hour…and this will show the trend nicely for windspeed, temperature, and rain
The new graphing looks very good, but I think we should be carefull not to go too far over the top with graphs and add ons as this will detract from the very simple and easy to read and understand format currently presented.
The thing to remember is you will get a lot of ‘non weather buffs’ visiting your websites, and I think wd live is just what they want to see. It shows plain and simple data in an easy to read way.
It may be worth the people who want wd live crammed with more features to add a feedback note to their sites to ask what the visitors want, because at the end of the day, we have to provide for them, which is not always what we want.
true, yes, but the way Julian has done it is good…i.e it has not added any more cluter
you just have to realise there is the drop down selection for what to graph, and it looks pretty straight forward …
3 cheers for a job well done me thinks!
It’s not quite ready yet - I need to make the drop down appear in alphabetical order and to remember what was last selected. I’d also like to make the background to the graph a bit clearer but it’s getting there.
Yes, I agree it is very good, and it looks very clean compared with the ‘other similar application available’. I just dont want to see it ending up looking cheap. Like it is, it is streets ahead of the competition, and I would like to see it stay there. (I like to see the big companies put into the shade by people like Brian and Julian.)
How about an option in the XML Config file to either show/include the graphing drop down or not show it. This would satisfy both those that like it and want it and those that do not.
