New Met Éireann Website (beta)

andygaw

Discodog wrote: »

A designer probably told them that it wasn't snazzy & new. The fact that it worked & provided what was needed is irrelevant.

Agree 100%.

Lissavane

andygaw wrote: »

If we are all honest now, The new website is fairly poor, who in the name of God sanctioned this piece of work to go live!

Website seems to select my location as Dublin Phoenix Park, whether or not I allow location sharing. I don't want to select my location every time I visit the site.

I'm more than happy with YR for forecasts but ME was useful for current observations. Not any more, unless I want to jump through hoops. I'll be using XC Weather for current conditions until things improve.

andygaw

this still works - http://mobile.met.ie/forecasts/

Oneiric 3

Pretty sickened that the Atlantic charts have been dropped, along with the 3 hour forecast charts. I found these to be one of the more handy features of the old site.

Regarding the 'current conditions' page, upon a click on, and despite my location being entered, the entire top of the page is given over the days weather at Dublin Airport:



I'm not being smart, but what goes on at Dublin Apt has no relevance to the vast majority of people in the country, least so to those of us in the west. If this feature is to be shown, I think it would be better placed on the bottom of the page below the current reports, because the way it is at the moment, it is just invasive.

Lissavane

Discodog wrote: »

A designer probably told them that it wasn't snazzy & new. The fact that it worked & provided what was needed is irrelevant.

I've a fair insight into the way these State bodies operate. I imagine the Minister and higher echelons in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government were more interested in the media launch than in the functioning of the website or app. Furthermore, if this launch had been pencilled in to their diaries for today, they'd insist on going ahead with it despite any advice from Met Éireann to the contrary. They'd sicken you.

It's all about PR and spin. They don't expect any major public outcry about the ME website, no matter how bad it is - and they're probably right.

Oneiric 3

muckwarrior wrote: »

The old site was outdated and badly needed updating. Just because you don't like the new one doesn't mean it shouldn't have been updated.

In what way did it need 'updating'? It was perfectly functional as it was, and as it stands, the new site has less of the features of the old one, which hardly screams 'badly needed update'.

Supercell

andygaw wrote: »

this still works - http://mobile.met.ie/forecasts/

Thank heavens , looks like the old website is now the mobile website??!! Anyhow, lets hope they leave it!!

pauldry

Supercell wrote: »

Thank heavens , looks like the old website is now the mobile website??!! Anyhow, lets hope they leave it!!

Hurray!!!!

Auld Jim Halpin

Supercell wrote: »

Thank heavens , looks like the old website is now the mobile website??!! Anyhow, lets hope they leave it!!

Yay!

Edit- I had a closer look at the new website yesterday and yes it does have some new and good features, but using the original one just now is so much better, easier to get around, better layout and grouping of links, brighter colour scheme. I have two different requirements from the website, firstly a quick glance at radar, temp and a brief browse of the days forecast to see what to wear, when to be indoors etc. Secondly, a more detailed look, taking 20 mins or so and looking at the bigger picture of previous weather and future weather. The new website made the quick look difficult. I really hope they keep the features we like and know, the ones that we are so used to that we essentially make a forecast of our own. The familiarity brings about trust.

Maybe boards.ie can list all features of the old and do a poll?

Alanstrainor

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

In what way did it need 'updating'? It was perfectly functional as it was, and as it stands, the new site has less of the features of the old one, which hardly screams 'badly needed update'.

The trend in web design is more of a unified design that looks and feels the same no matter what device you use. Laptop, tablet or phone the new website is very much the same. It is more optimised for a touch interface.

Don't get me wrong, they have made a huge mistake releasing this. And the dev team is probably still in the office pulling their hair out that this went live.If I were to guess the problem with the radar, I would say that they did not have a commercial license to use google maps for the radar. Once a certain bandwidth was used, google pulls the maps from the site until they sort out a payment plan. I've seen it happen a few times in the past.

Change is hard, but it is needed imo. Perhaps they will include the missing functionality that people have mentioned is missing in a later release. But iit doesn't bother me.

ninebeanrows

Open Street Map was used.

https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/


Maybe over usage of this was the source of the issue.

Alanstrainor

Weathercheck wrote: »

Open Street Map was used.

https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/


Maybe over usage of this was the source of the issue.

I had noticed there was a change in the last week from Open Street Map to google maps. I do think that it was likely something usage related. All of us boards users hitting that refresh button like mad things!

pad199207

Weathercheck wrote: »

Open Street Map was used.

https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/


Maybe over usage of this was the source of the issue.

Yeah I was just going to mention that the map looked rather different to Google Maps

my3cents

Weathercheck wrote: »

Open Street Map was used.

https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/


Maybe over usage of this was the source of the issue.

Which may account for the change of URL (www2.metweb.ie) to try and make it look like it was a different website using the maps?

gabeeg

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

In what way did it need 'updating'? It was perfectly functional as it was, and as it stands, the new site has less of the features of the old one, which hardly screams 'badly needed update'.

The site you miss so much was built using html table based design. This was standard practise in the late 90's and early 2000's.
The current incarnation was launched in mid 2006. They were shafted.
Best practise had already shifted to CSS based layouts by then.

A year later the iphone got released, and another major evolution to responsive layouts that support all manner of screen sizes began.
Met.ie was still stuck in the 90s.

I'm not sure what their content management system will have been, but if their codebase was defunct out of the box, I could safely guess that the whole thing was dated from day one.

So they've been sitting on an unwieldy piece of crap for 12 years. When it's crap like that you have to throw money, people and time at it just to keep it to the same level of crap while browser technology moves on.

gabeeg

Oh and you can do almost nothing new with a codebase like that.
Any good ideas would have to be politely **** down.

And of course you won't be able to hire any talented people to work on such a dinosaur.

piuswal

Lissavane wrote: »

I've a fair insight into the way these State bodies operate. I imagine the Minister and higher echelons in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government were more interested in the media launch than in the functioning of the website or app. Furthermore, if this launch had been pencilled in to their diaries for today, they'd insist on going ahead with it despite any advice from Met Éireann to the contrary. They'd sicken you.

It's all about PR and spin. They don't expect any major public outcry about the ME website, no matter how bad it is - and they're probably right.

Just saw Dept Housing tweet re launch etc lending some support to your argument.

Rougies

The biggest issue here is that there has been ZERO feedback from Met Éireann since they asked us specifically for our feedback here on the weather forum. There have been loads of good suggestions and valid critique, but we've been just given the middle finger and the site was launched pretty much as it was anyway.

JCX BXC

Not good this morning, seems alot of the rectification from yesterday has simply been eradicated. Location back to Dublin and Leinster with no option to change, which is useless. None of the weather maps will load, not the radar, not the wind, nothing.

On the topic of whether an upgrade was needed, I would say yes, it was, however I had presumed that when the official launch was announced, these issues were ironed out. They are clearly not. I actually found the site much easier to use in Beta.

morgana

Yup. I used the app last night and it worked as intended with automatically getting your location and pulling in the data. I was actually impressed.
This morning it's back to default Dublin but even at that it fails to pull in any data. Maybe a server capacity issue as well?

Shane St.

It looks nice. But I am still getting my head around it. I liked the rainfall radar and wind maps on the old site

axe2grind

andygaw wrote: »

this still works - http://mobile.met.ie/forecasts/

Lifesaver!!

Oneiric 3

As suggested by others, this seems to be more about the promotion and photo ops rather than the quality of the product:



Can't find any radar at all now on the site, and in its place is a large, obtrusive meteogram, that gives no more than noon temps for the next 5 or 6 days, and hourly temps below it for what seems to be a very selective areas.

Think I'll be sticking with DMI for the time being, which also uses the 'Harmonie' model:

Tables and meteograms:
http://www.dmi.dk/vejr/til-lands/byvejr/by/vis/IE/2965471/Claremorris,%20Irland/

Actual model:
http://www.dmi.dk/vejr/til-lands/vejrkort/#

Oneiric 3

gabeeg wrote: »

So they've been sitting on an unwieldy piece of crap for 12 years. When it's crap like that you have to throw money, people and time at it just to keep it to the same level of crap while browser technology moves on.

And in the name of progress, we now have even more crap, which no doubt a hell of a lot of money and time was thrown at.

Embracing 'change' just for the sake of change does not necessarily mean that the change is always good, because in this case, it is far from that.

CrowdedHouse

archive.met.ie works for the old one too, still being updated.

pauldry

axe2grind wrote: »

Lifesaver!!

Yeah im just using that link anymore.

Compared to new site old site is BRILLIANT

Discodog

pauldry wrote: »

Yeah im just using that link anymore.

Compared to new site old site is BRILLIANT

Wtf haven't they put an apology & link to the old site

badtoro

Hi,

Would anyone know how I can fix my location on the new ME app. I've enabled location on phone yet it shows up as Dublin, which is the other side of the country.

pad199207

Discodog wrote: »

Wtf haven't they put an apology & link to the old site

They apologized a few times on twitter yesterday in fairness. They are working around the teething problems.
Just give them a few days and hopefully it will be all smoothed out.

Comhrá

There are issues with the app (and indeed the main website) since it was launched. Will probably take a few days to be fixed. Many people including myself have had similar problems with it.