New NWAC pages

The font size is not fixed or set anywhere in my script, you can reduce it in a web browser (not sure about Blackberry, I've never used one). My script does keep the <pre></pre> tags from the NWAC source, which forces a fixed-width font to make sure the columns stay aligned.

... Does anyone really want an even narrower version of that, or narrow versions of other wide sites? The narrow version has to be manually figured out and coded for each individual site, since they all have different columns and widths.


...

I would probably almost PAY for narrower versions.

The other weird thing is that on your scripted versions I cannot change the font for the data. Your links and text change, but the actual data stays on that same one NWAC uses. This is some kind of blackberry issue as my laptop browser can change it, with different fonts set for regular and fixed. The blackberry browser changes only your text and uses the default NWAC one for the data.



Maybe it hinges on that pre tag. I hope you don't get bored with this and force me to learn PHP!

Edit: I tried a different browser (Opera Mini) that totally ignores the pre tag, so the columns don't line up precisely but are close enough that with the font set to "small" I get all of the columns on one row! This browser is a bit clunky compared to the default one but I am better off than before the change.

Amar for president of the internet! Charles for VP!

Anyway, unbelievably quick help, thanks a bunch.

I would probably almost PAY for narrower versions.

Well, the PHP script now has an option to narrow down the wider data files. All sites can now be displayed at 70 chars wide or less, without any real loss of readability. Making them any narrower starts to make a mess of the column headings.

As for the <pre> tags: I experimented with removing them (which requires adding a <BR> after each line), but as expected everything looks completely unreadable in a variable width font. But it was very easy to just add an option to reduce the font size of the <pre></pre> section, which then uses <FONT SIZE="-1">, while the text size remains unchanged for everything else. Hopefully this will fix the text size issue in your Blackberry browser.

I hope you don't get bored with this and force me to learn PHP!

It's fun to spend some time programming occasionally, to keep my skills from getting too rusty. And I have to say that PHP is by far my favorite programming language of the half-dozen or so that I've learned. It's like a beautiful superset of C and Perl which addresses the most annoying quirks of both, and integrates seamlessly within HTML. Definitely worth learning.

Hopefully this will fix the text size issue in your Blackberry browser.

It's fun to spend some time programming occasionally, to keep my skills from getting too rusty. And I have to say that PHP is by far my favorite programming language of the half-dozen or so that I've learned. It's like a beautiful superset of C and Perl which addresses the most annoying quirks of both, and integrates seamlessly within HTML. Definitely worth learning.

I feel guilty reporting that it did not fix it! The narrower pages look better in the aftermarket browser, but both just ignore the size instructions from the page. The OEM blackberry one pays atention to instructions for your text and links, and uses the big ugly mono font from NWAC for the data, and the aftermarket one just uses the big/medium/small sizes set with the browser for all text and ignores server side input.

The OEM browser has a setting for minimum size and it stops at 6, so that may be the problem. I looked into just converting the page into an image last night, and may poke into that after work. The aftermarket ones are a doable workaround, as I get to have a browser dedicated to NWAC data!

Still very appreciative of your efforts, and happy to keep testing. I tried an iphone after they got landscape mode and the blackberry still had more accurate display of the wide text data, but I bet you have helped the iphone users here! My model blackberry is a bit older and the new ones may be better or worse.

Thanks again, and if you really want to improve things you could make the numbers in the total snowfall column a lot bigger!

Amar, thanks for updating your site, it looks good and is fast.  marksvend, nice work on Cascade Crud.  Maybe you should pitch in on the NWAC effort?
BTW, I emailed the NWAC web team who responded:

The telemetry data is now available to users here: www.nwac.us/data . I will be putting a link on the home page pointing to that folder of data files. However, the SAB__ files that are located there are the "old" forecast files. We're currently investigating if/how we can provide text formats of the forecast files. We went from one Detailed avy forecast to13 regional forecasts; Currently none of the avy forecast files or weather forecast files are updated in this data folder.
I'll let you know if we are able to provide the SAB__ files in raw text format any time soon. Hopefully the telemetry data will provide some help.
Please also note we plan to add mobile product access to the site in our next release. Unfortunately, we couldn't do everything with this first release of the new site.

Regards,
Jorie Wackerman
Board Director & web manager
Friends of NWAC

So it looks like they are working on it.  Stay tuned...

Yes, Squakmtn is right, we (NWAC/FOAC) are providing access to the raw data files, at www.nwac.us/data . We currently provide, or will by later next week:
- raw data from all the telemetry sites for the current day
- the ALL file, which pulls together all telemetry sites into one file, for the current day
- the SABWA and SABOR products (those are the Summary Avy Forecasts in text format)
- the CLISNO data file, the twice-monthly CLIMATOLOGICAL SNOWDEPTH file

We are also discussing if the concatenated 10-day versions can be included in the /data folder. We will keep you posted on the outcome of those discussions.

Thanks to all TAY'ers for comments, feedback, and input. Many of you are tech folks, so understand the complexities of providing the best software or web site for the most users, and also the difficulty of doing everything you want with limited resources. We will continue to update and improve the site while also utilizing the new site as a fundraising avenue for NWAC.  If you have any more feedback or suggestions, please email us at friends@nwac.us. Your support and input is much appreciated.

Jorie, the Friends board, and NWAC team

...we (NWAC/FOAC) are providing access to the raw data files...

Thanks to all TAY'ers for comments, feedback, and input ...

No, thank you! I will send this update directly but wanted to share with any blackberry users out there.

The return of the data filed coincided with my finding a previously ignored option on the regular browser that gets me a the data lined up on one screen. It is tiny but readable. The setting is the column/page view option, and is hotkeyed to Z (for Zoom?)

So I have better access to my info addiction just as the numbers are getting big!