Author Topic: Meteotemplate - new free website template  (Read 627258 times)

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Offline jay_hoehn

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6650 on: April 28, 2017, 01:53:31 PM »
Or a list of stations specified by you?

That would work!😂
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Offline vreihen

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6651 on: April 28, 2017, 08:12:12 PM »
Tool tip is a great idea!

...says the person using a legacy PC with a mouse!  Try it on a mobile device or tablet, and let me know if your opinion changes.  (I just tested against MT 12's current conditions block with my iPhone and Google Chrome for iOS.)

News flash 3 April, 2017 --> ‘End of an era’: Windows usage falls behind Android for first time in 'milestone in tech history'

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/end-era-windows-usage-falls-130400389.html

The post-PC era has officially begun..... ;)
WU Gold Stars for everyone! :lol:

Offline wxthomson

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6652 on: April 28, 2017, 08:37:54 PM »
The graphical forecast looks nice but as I mentioned earlier the block needs a heading and some instructions.  A visitor to the site would not know what the block is.  The user would also have to figure out to move the slider to change time.  I am finding on my site that people often do not spend time trying to figure out what is going on.  They don't tend to experiment much on the site.  If something is obvious they will try it.  If not they move on.

I am talking about the average visitor to the site not a long time template user.

Perhaps a header should include something like "Move slider to change time for forecast."

My site is not for my use put for the casual visitor.




Tom


You could create a subBlock with a text block on top and graphicalForecast on the bottom.
In the text block you can put whatever description/directions you want.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2017, 08:40:20 PM by wxthomson »

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6653 on: April 28, 2017, 08:48:50 PM »
Yes. but that probably is not the most elegant solution :D

I could include some "help" icon which when clicked, will open some help text, but Im just not 100% convinced it is necessary to say "slide the slider"

The thing is, this slider is the default jQuery slider. jQuery is today used by over 70% of all pages on the web! Including Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, all news pages you name it. And this is the default slider, so I dare to say vast majority of users have already seen such slider before and will understand they should "slide it".

They might not know what will happen, I agree with that, but once they slide it, they surely will understand when they see the time moving forward and conditions changing.

With regards to icon descriptions in general, I agree there should be some icon descriptions dialog/page. And it might not take that long before it will be implemented :-)

Offline wxthomson

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6654 on: April 28, 2017, 08:59:13 PM »
Yes. but that probably is not the most elegant solution :D

I could include some "help" icon which when clicked, will open some help text, but Im just not 100% convinced it is necessary to say "slide the slider"

The thing is, this slider is the default jQuery slider. jQuery is today used by over 70% of all pages on the web! Including Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, all news pages you name it. And this is the default slider, so I dare to say vast majority of users have already seen such slider before and will understand they should "slide it".

They might not know what will happen, I agree with that, but once they slide it, they surely will understand when they see the time moving forward and conditions changing.

With regards to icon descriptions in general, I agree there should be some icon descriptions dialog/page. And it might not take that long before it will be implemented :-)


True, but as Tom noted the casual view may not even notice the slider.
In my text block I simply said "48 Hour Forecast:  move slider to change time/day"

Offline nineback

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6655 on: April 28, 2017, 09:31:03 PM »
I think this comment applies to many of the Template block/plug-ins.  I have been trying to convince Jáchym of this but you said it so simply.

" the casual view may not even notice the slider."

In a few cases I have changed my text block and if I remember correctly an update wiped out my changes.


Tom

Yes. but that probably is not the most elegant solution :D

I could include some "help" icon which when clicked, will open some help text, but Im just not 100% convinced it is necessary to say "slide the slider"

The thing is, this slider is the default jQuery slider. jQuery is today used by over 70% of all pages on the web! Including Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, all news pages you name it. And this is the default slider, so I dare to say vast majority of users have already seen such slider before and will understand they should "slide it".

They might not know what will happen, I agree with that, but once they slide it, they surely will understand when they see the time moving forward and conditions changing.

With regards to icon descriptions in general, I agree there should be some icon descriptions dialog/page. And it might not take that long before it will be implemented :-)


True, but as Tom noted the casual view may not even notice the slider.
In my text block I simply said "48 Hour Forecast:  move slider to change time/day"
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Offline tstorm

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6656 on: April 29, 2017, 10:23:26 AM »
  In the case of the graphical forecast in my opinion I don't think there needs to be any explanation on what to do.  I just asked my wife and son (13) who don't go to my website and they knew they needed to move the slider. 

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6657 on: April 29, 2017, 10:43:21 AM »
Yes... this is exactly the problem... hundred people, hundred opinions

Without suggesting I prefer one or the other let me just mention a few points, which some of you might not realize:

1. some people have lot of blocks, having a description of everything will make each block much larger in terms of space

2. one thing many of you probably dont realize is that in a sense you are very lucky - lucky because I have decided to use your native language as the template default - in other words, the strings appear ok for you without having to wait for translation to be available, installing it etc. But remember you are a minority, over 50% of users use the template in a different language. Now let's just assume that I decided to have English as just an additional language, and default Czech. This would happen then - you would install this block and at the top you would see "klikněte na pohyblivý posuvník pro posun předpovědi" - great isnt it :D And you would have to wait before someone provides translation (or provide it yourself), then wait before I add it to the translation database and then update your language files. And this would happen with every single string. This is a major issue. I try to use icons wherever possible, try to avoid as much as possible long strings, and try to use the already available ones. This is also because the more language strings there are, the more people are discouraged from even translating something - they see a very long list and just say - "oh, Im not doing that". From my perspective this is not a problem, but...

3. on the other hand I understand that in some cases some people find it not so intuitive

4. I can add customizations to the template, but only to a certain extent. I simply cannot let you set every single font color, every section of the block, this would create infinitely long settings pages, hours of work for me and I think that unless you write all the code yourself, you will simply never have 100% what you like - and this is by no means just a problem of Meteotemplate

5. to make things worse, as you can see, even if I think I found a solution (tooltip), someone points out a scenario, where this will not work (touchscreen displays)

This was not to say I prefer one or the other soluton, just summarizing the situation, if anyone has any ideas, Im happy to hear them, but when I look at it, I personally think the only solution is some sort of a compromise, which will never 100% suit everyone

Offline Jáchym

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Meteotemplate - Block Update – Meteogram 2.0
« Reply #6658 on: April 29, 2017, 11:17:33 AM »
Block Update – Meteogram 2.0

Hi guys,

version 2 adds support for multiple locations.

If you are updating this block, you also need to delete the original settings.php file in the Meteogram block folder and set up the block again, the original settings file is NOT compatible with this update.

If you only specify one location, no select box will appear. If you specify more than one, you will see a select box, where the first location in your settings will load by default.

DEMO: http://www.meteotemplate.com/template/indexBlockDemoWide.php?block=meteogram

Enjoy

Offline jay_hoehn

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6659 on: April 29, 2017, 11:23:04 AM »
Jachym,

I am helping a friend get his MT going and we are getting a warning in the GRLevelX block about time zone,  Can you suggest a fix?

http://somnwx.com

Jay
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6660 on: April 29, 2017, 11:26:42 AM »
In grLevelXImageLoader.php

Right at the top above

include("settings.php");

Put:

date_default_timezone_set("UTC");

Offline jay_hoehn

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6661 on: April 29, 2017, 11:33:57 AM »
Thanks, that solved the problem.  Why didn't my installation have that issue?

Jay
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6662 on: April 29, 2017, 11:38:00 AM »
Because your (and my and most people's) server tolerates a bit more :D

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6663 on: April 29, 2017, 12:45:01 PM »
Thanks, that solved the problem.  Why didn't my installation have that issue?

Jay

Just to clarify this a bit more.

Technically you should always provide the server with the timezone when requesting time. However, vast majority of servers will tolerate it even if you dont and just use the default server time.

The reason you did not see this on other pages is because I normally always have to make sure the TZ is specified as well so that the times are correct. The reason I did not do it in this case was because the time as such was irrelevant. I only used it because I needed to generate a random number to add to the image name to prevent the browser from caching the image. And I used the current timestamp for that.

Offline Jáchym

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Meteotemplate - Possible outages!
« Reply #6664 on: April 29, 2017, 01:38:14 PM »
Hi guys,

tomorrow, April 30th 2017, between 12 and approximately 16 UTC certain pages at meteotemplate.com might be temporarily not available (DEMO, wiki, Downloads). 

Offline wxthomson

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6665 on: April 29, 2017, 02:08:28 PM »
Yes... this is exactly the problem... hundred people, hundred opinions

Without suggesting I prefer one or the other let me just mention a few points, which some of you might not realize:

1. some people have lot of blocks, having a description of everything will make each block much larger in terms of space

2. one thing many of you probably dont realize is that in a sense you are very lucky - lucky because I have decided to use your native language as the template default - in other words, the strings appear ok for you without having to wait for translation to be available, installing it etc. But remember you are a minority, over 50% of users use the template in a different language. Now let's just assume that I decided to have English as just an additional language, and default Czech. This would happen then - you would install this block and at the top you would see "klikněte na pohyblivý posuvník pro posun předpovědi" - great isnt it :D And you would have to wait before someone provides translation (or provide it yourself), then wait before I add it to the translation database and then update your language files. And this would happen with every single string. This is a major issue. I try to use icons wherever possible, try to avoid as much as possible long strings, and try to use the already available ones. This is also because the more language strings there are, the more people are discouraged from even translating something - they see a very long list and just say - "oh, Im not doing that". From my perspective this is not a problem, but...

3. on the other hand I understand that in some cases some people find it not so intuitive

4. I can add customizations to the template, but only to a certain extent. I simply cannot let you set every single font color, every section of the block, this would create infinitely long settings pages, hours of work for me and I think that unless you write all the code yourself, you will simply never have 100% what you like - and this is by no means just a problem of Meteotemplate

5. to make things worse, as you can see, even if I think I found a solution (tooltip), someone points out a scenario, where this will not work (touchscreen displays)

This was not to say I prefer one or the other soluton, just summarizing the situation, if anyone has any ideas, Im happy to hear them, but when I look at it, I personally think the only solution is some sort of a compromise, which will never 100% suit everyone


Of course, as the developer you can do whatever you choose to do.
I don't know, but my guess is the you chose English because it is your most widely used single language.
I don't think you would have nearly the following you enjoy if you did it in Czech.

Besides, i wasn't asking you to change anything just offering a solution for a particular issue.

I still agree with Tom that the casual viewer may not notice the slider.

Casual viewing is much different than asking a family member to look at something.

Steve


Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6666 on: April 29, 2017, 02:17:40 PM »
Yes, I appreciate your feedback.

But I also think you missed my point when talking about English being the most widely used single language. Yes, but translations are related to all other users and I know that the number of users of all other languages is greater than that of English speaking users, so the problem I outlined above is a problem of over 50% of users.

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6667 on: April 29, 2017, 02:22:45 PM »
If I did what I said in Czech, it would affect like 95% of users, but even with English, we are still talking about majority.

Anyway, it is not really a matter of yes or no. Some description is always required and some sort of intuition as well. It is all about finding the line where you say, ok this is just something people should be able to figure out - i.e. if we take it to an extreme and exaggarate it, you could end up including statements such as "use left button of your mouse to click the below link to go to the linked page", "click on the menu with left mouse button to open it" etc.

So I am not saying we should not have this and as I said previously, some of this will also be taken into account in the upcoming new version, I added headings to several blocks based on Tom's suggestion. However in this particular case, my feeling is that this slider, not even being something Meteotemlate-specific, is understandable and large enough for the user to notice it, we can make a poll :D

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Meteotemplate 14.0 Rose Apple
« Reply #6668 on: April 30, 2017, 08:38:48 AM »
Meteotemplate 14.0 Rose Apple

Hi guys,

I am proud to announce a new version of Meteotemplate is now available - this time a real major update in terms of new features and another on of the "front-end" updates - meaning most of the changes are changes you can directly see on the page, help you as an admin or brand new pages.

There really is A LOT of new things - but the update is actually quite simple and should not take very long. This update further extends the possibilities for blocks, menu, homepage, introduces several new designs, many new design tweaks in the main setup, several brand new pages,  adds "semi-support" for some programs for the API (Cumulus etc.) etc. etc. And one absolutely unique feature, which I am sure you will all find very useful!


All information about what is new, demos and most importantly - update instructions - can be found in the Blog:


http://meteotemplate.com/blog/?p=2420


You will need a download token, I will probably issue just a few at the beginning to make sure the upadte works fine. I will try to make sure you will always get a token within 24 hours, unless some serious problem is discovered and I need to pause the updates.

DEMO has been updated already and wiki as well.

ENJOY!

P.S. I know this will sound harsh, but if you do not read and follow the instructions and something goes wrong, I will be very hesitant to help you. In v12 update I spent hours fixing things only because people "assumed" things rather then reading what to do and you have to understand it is quite frustrating to spend hours preparing the documentation, which people then ignore anyway :-) Thanks!
« Last Edit: April 30, 2017, 08:46:45 AM by Jáchym »

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6669 on: April 30, 2017, 12:38:12 PM »
OK, no complaints or desperate posts about template not working so I assume it is working fine, great :-)

If you find any bugs you can post them, I already know about one, but I would fix them all at once and release a bug fix package in a few days

Offline nitrx

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6670 on: April 30, 2017, 01:29:18 PM »
I saw in the demo that the seasons winter and summer have years 2016/2017 etc I think this has to do with Northern Hemisphere and Southern ?

Anyway I will install this week and ask for the token , looks promising Jachym  =D>
Ron
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6671 on: April 30, 2017, 01:42:54 PM »
Hi Ron,
thanks, it is a mistake, you should of course only see this for winter (N) and summer (S)

Offline nitrx

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6672 on: April 30, 2017, 02:14:06 PM »
Your welcome indeed it was confusing
Ron
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Offline rainbow

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Re: Meteotemplate - new free website template
« Reply #6674 on: April 30, 2017, 04:49:17 PM »
Meteotemplate 14.0 works well, I had only 3 minor problems:
1. graph.php
2. meteogram block
3. format of the astroEvents block
...have not worked. I have installed the previous versions again.

Good job!
« Last Edit: April 30, 2017, 05:23:05 PM by rainbow »


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