New AWC site is now live

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

Like to know what you think.  I am having a difficult time using it on my iPhone...it crashes most of the time when I zoom out on the map.  Both Chrome and Safari. The static imagery page is almost unusable.  You have to constantly scroll up/down to choose and view the image you want to view.  

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Scott Dennstaedt, PhD

[ohdub]

Crashed almost immediately for me on Android using Chrome.

[ohdub]

I downloaded the app, it seems to work well.

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

30 minutes ago, ohdub said:

I downloaded the app, it seems to work well.

When you say downloaded the app, do you mean from the App Store or Google Play store?  

[dzeleski]

Its laggy even on a powerful laptop. They definitely have some tweaks they need to make. Some things are better some are worse.

Ill probably continue to use Pivotal, Windy, and Foreflight.

[ohdub]

13 minutes ago, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

When you say downloaded the app, do you mean from the App Store or Google Play store?  

Yes, from the Google Play store.

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

1 hour ago, ohdub said:

Yes, from the Google Play store.

Ah, okay. You must be talking about some other app.  I searched on the Google Play and App Store and did not see any downloadable apps for aviationweather.gov.  Nothing that I can find on aviationweather.gov either to indicate there was a *native* app.  A progressive web app (PWA) for sure, but not a native app for aviationweather.gov.  

 

Edit: Just checked with the folks at the AWC and there's no native app on the Google Play or App Store.  

Edited October 16, 2023 by Scott Dennstaedt, PhD

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

With this new site, the AWC will be eliminating (or has eliminated) much of the "static" imagery.

Right now, the static imagery being kept for a while is:
G-AIRMETs
SIGMETs
WPC Prog charts
SigWx charts
Icing (CIP/FIP)
Turbulence (GTG)
GFA static images (under /gfa/plot on the legacy website)
B&W Fax charts

Static images going away soon/now:
Lowest freezing level from the RAP
TCF, eTCF, ECFP
RAP/NAM Wind/Temp graphics
TAF plots
PIREP plots
METAR plots
Satellite regional plots
Vis/Fog satellite images
Radar regional plots
RCM radar plots

Of course, some of this imagery is encapsulated in the interactive map...which on my iPhone crashes every time when doing a pinch to zoom out gesture. The graphics section is really hard to use. Takes many clicks to get to the images you want to see without a lot of scrolling up/down...pretty much unusable. I will keep as many of the static images available on my site until they turn off the production of those...then I will build my own.

[ohdub]

1 hour ago, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

Ah, okay. You must be talking about some other app.  I searched on the Google Play and App Store and did not see any downloadable apps for aviationweather.gov.  Nothing that I can find on aviationweather.gov either to indicate there was a *native* app.  A progressive web app (PWA) for sure, but not a native app for aviationweather.gov.  

 

Edit: Just checked with the folks at the AWC and there's no native app on the Google Play or App Store.  

When I opened the AWC web page on Chrome a notification popped up to download the app, I clicked it and an AWC app installed. I guess I didn't actually go to the Google store to get it, I just assumed it came from there. Here is a screen shot of it.

 

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

That’s a progressive web app, like I have with EZWxBrief, not a native app. 

[MikeOH]

In a word, "sucks".

Now, get off my lawn!

 

P.S. I'm really going to be annoyed if they get rid of the Prog Charts.  Hell, I'm old enough to remember reading them from a tele-fax back when you could actually walk into a weather briefing office!

[Fly Boomer]

On 10/16/2023 at 1:18 PM, ohdub said:

When I opened the AWC web page on Chrome a notification popped up to download the app, I clicked it and an AWC app installed. I guess I didn't actually go to the Google store to get it, I just assumed it came from there. Here is a screen shot of it.

Interesting.  When I go to aviationweather.gov on my iPad (Safari), there is no mention of an app.  The top results from a search for apps give me some church or the Army War College.  And, accessing the web site is fairly intuitive with pretty snappy performance.  Not exactly loving it, but it's not too bad.

[MountainGoat]

On 10/16/2023 at 1:08 PM, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

With this new site, the AWC will be eliminating (or has eliminated) much of the "static" imagery.

So, what if you want to download to look at things like that when internet may not be readily available, such as reviewing weather brief during a flight?

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

9 hours ago, MikeOH said:

In a word, "sucks".

Now, get off my lawn!

 

P.S. I'm really going to be annoyed if they get rid of the Prog Charts.  Hell, I'm old enough to remember reading them from a tele-fax back when you could actually walk into a weather briefing office!

The prog charts are expected to remain. However, even if they do, the WPC will have them since they are the organization that generates them.  I import the WPC progs into my app since they are updated more frequently then the ones at the AWC.  

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

3 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

Interesting.  When I go to aviationweather.gov on my iPad (Safari), there is no mention of an app.  The top results from a search for apps give me some church or the Army War College.  And, accessing the web site is fairly intuitive with pretty snappy performance.  Not exactly loving it, but it's not too bad.

The AWC doesn't have a native app that you will find in the Google Play or App Store.  It's a progressive web app like I use for my site. PWA or not, their site is horrible on portable devices like the iPhone. It crashes way too often and just is hard to navigate.  

Edited October 18, 2023 by Scott Dennstaedt, PhD

[Fly Boomer]

2 hours ago, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

The AWC doesn't have a native app that you will find in the Google Play or App Store.  It's a progressive web app like I use for my site.  It's horrible on portable devices like the iPhone. It crashes way too often and just is hard to navigate.  

I don't see the point.  Why install an app when the native web site works fine?

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

5 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

I don't see the point.  Why install an app when the native web site works fine?

Read up about PWAs. You can use the site in the browser, but why not take advantage of the PWA so that the space on the device can be optimized?  

[Fly Boomer]

Just now, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

Read up about PWAs. You can use the site in the browser, but why not take advantage of the PWA so that the space on the device can be optimized?  

So the app uses less resources than the browser?  Too complicated for me.

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

1 minute ago, Fly Boomer said:

So the app uses less resources than the browser?  Too complicated for me.

What complexity are you referring to?  You simply install this as a PWA and you are done. It just adds an icon to your desktop or home screen and you can launch it just like any other native app.  Again, how complex is that?  It's actually quicker than searching and downloading from the App Store. And when there are updates, they become available immediately and there's no need to interact with Apple or Google to get those updates  Again, I see that as "less" complex, not more.   

[MikeOH]

4 minutes ago, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

What complexity are you referring to?  You simply install this as a PWA and you are done. It just adds an icon to your desktop or home screen and you can launch it just like any other native app.  Again, how complex is that?  It's actually quicker than searching and downloading from the App Store. And when there are updates, they become available immediately and there's no need to interact with Apple or Google to get those updates  Again, I see that as "less" complex, not more.   

So how is this desktop icon for a PWA any different than a simple link to a website? After all, if this ?app? is running on the web what’s the advantage?

[dzeleski]

Just now, Scott Dennstaedt, PhD said:

What complexity are you referring to?  You simply install this as a PWA and you are done. It just adds an icon to your desktop or home screen and you can launch it just like any other native app.  Again, how complex is that?  It's actually quicker than searching and downloading from the App Store. And when there are updates, they become available immediately and there's no need to interact with Apple or Google to get those updates  Again, I see that as "less" complex, not more.   

As someone who is a SWE/SRE and professionally manages very large applications and APIs... PWAs have a very small use case list where they are not terrible. Loading everything into a Javascript or Typescript based frame work generally ends poorly. PWAs can only take advantage of whatever the browser supports, where a native application can take advantage of the hardware far more effectively.

PWAs are popular because you can build something quickly and cheaply that works on many browsers. When you need to load a bunch of data, process it, display it, etc. I would not be picking a PWA. Its very easy to consume whatever memory limits the browser allows on a phone, on iPhone I believe its under 515MB. I dont even think Apple publishes an official number either.

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

23 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

So how is this desktop icon for a PWA any different than a simple link to a website? After all, if this ?app? is running on the web what’s the advantage?

Here's what I wrote up when I decided to launch my site as a PWA instead of a native app. You also have to deal with the orientations of smaller devices like an iPhone in both orientations. When you have a browser in landscape, the address bar takes up valuable space that you may want to utilize for other buttons/selections.  

https://www.avwxtraining.com/post/the-scoop-on-progressive-web-apps-pwas-ezwxbrief

Edited October 18, 2023 by Scott Dennstaedt, PhD

[dzeleski]

2 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

So how is this desktop icon for a PWA any different than a simple link to a website? After all, if this ?app? is running on the web what’s the advantage?

The only advantage is they dont need to manage native application tech debt. They can build a single PWA that runs on the browser and hope it works correctly. Its basically a web page using javascript tuned for mobile.

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

On 10/18/2023 at 1:59 PM, dzeleski said:

As someone who is a SWE/SRE and professionally manages very large applications and APIs... PWAs have a very small use case list where they are not terrible. Loading everything into a Javascript or Typescript based frame work generally ends poorly. PWAs can only take advantage of whatever the browser supports, where a native application can take advantage of the hardware far more effectively.

PWAs are popular because you can build something quickly and cheaply that works on many browsers. When you need to load a bunch of data, process it, display it, etc. I would not be picking a PWA. Its very easy to consume whatever memory limits the browser allows on a phone, on iPhone I believe its under 515MB. I dont even think Apple publishes an official number either.

With my PWA, I don't need any native operations like some of the heavyweight EFBs use.  In fact, many apps (probably a majority of them) that you download from the App Store are just regular web apps with a wrapper.  

Edited October 20, 2023 by Scott Dennstaedt, PhD

[Scott Dennstaedt, PhD]

6 minutes ago, dzeleski said:

The only advantage is they dont need to manage native application tech debt. They can build a single PWA that runs on the browser and hope it works correctly. Its basically a web page using javascript tuned for mobile.

That's correct...and if the code is designed properly, there are generally little issues and you get compatibility across the different platforms. For now, most browsers support PWAs, so it creates the look and feel of a native app without the costs involved.