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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 5:46 pm 
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winstep wrote:
Ok, I'll try to reproduce it here (if possible) so it doesn't happen again.

This said, 'M/d/yyyy dddd' is a custom format


The strange thing is I have never had a reason to change that setting. My only guess would be that some of the software that I have tested for my weather station may have changed some settings silently, that being one of them. I just don't recall any that required custom settings that was not made without me manually changing the required settings.


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:24 am 
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techman wrote:
Image

By the way, that's a strange "long date". Any time the system wants to show a long date, I will see:
Code:
Wednesday, February 26, 2019

and you will see:
Code:
Wednesday

Here is my Region Format settings screen for reference. (I work in the travel industry and am very used to short date formats of 26-Feb-19, so that's why my short date is that way.)
Attachment:
File comment: DesertDwarf's Region Format Settings
rundll32_2019-02-26_01-19-42.png
rundll32_2019-02-26_01-19-42.png [ 16.36 KiB | Viewed 16783 times ]


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:33 am 
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So, guys, I still didn't get any real feedback on the new Light Mode and UI icons.

Also, I might have to issue yet another public beta, even though I dislike releasing new betas in quick succession. Here is why I need to do this:

A lot of the Internet is moving from HTTP to HTTPS. This was not something that affected Winstep applications until NOAA decided to jump on the bandwagon.

When websites do this, they normally start automatically re-directing HTTP requests to HTTPS as well, which, when you are not a browser, means HTTP requests fail with a re-direction error (one of the reasons why locations based on METAR codes started displaying N/A, the other being a failure on the code to recognize what was happening and automatically cascade to the feed of other weather providers).

Anyway, in the expectation that more websites/feed providers will do this in the future, I decided to change the weather related code so *all of it* will now support HTTPS (and since this is also tied to SSL connections for the Email Checker module, changes had to be made there too).

The probability of introducing new bugs where none previously existed when making MAJOR changes to code that was previously stable, and had been so for years, is always very high.

On the other side of the coin, v19.2 needs to be released ASAP to fix the N/A METAR code weather problem, which means I can't afford to wait a suitable amount of time between betas either.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 4:14 pm 
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winstep wrote:
So, guys, I still didn't get any real feedback on the new Light Mode and UI icons.

I don't see same or would comment. "Light Mode" Iam more likely to use a Dark Mode much more pleasing to the eye I hate glare.


winstep wrote:
Also, I might have to issue yet another public beta, even though I dislike releasing new betas in quick succession. Here is why I need to do this:

A lot of the Internet is moving from HTTP to HTTPS. This was not something that affected Winstep applications until NOAA decided to jump on the bandwagon.

When websites do this, they normally start automatically re-directing HTTP requests to HTTPS as well, which, when you are not a browser, means HTTP requests fail with a re-direction error (one of the reasons why locations based on METAR codes started displaying N/A, the other being a failure on the code to recognize what was happening and automatically cascade to the feed of other weather providers).

Anyway, in the expectation that more websites/feed providers will do this in the future, I decided to change the weather related code so *all of it* will now support HTTPS (and since this is also tied to SSL connections for the Email Checker module, changes had to be made there too).

The probability of introducing new bugs where none previously existed when making MAJOR changes to code that was previously stable, and had been so for years, is always very high.

Publish a Beta Public/private we will take care off finding those BUG's/Features.


winstep wrote:
On the other side of the coin, v19.2 needs to be released ASAP to fix the N/A METAR code weather problem, which means I can't afford to wait a suitable amount of time between betas either.

I am still waiting for a reply from weather.com to find out the proper code for my home town, here in the Shetlands.

Bring it on. :lol:

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:25 am 
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Ok, third and hopefully final beta of v19.2 released. This must necessarily be a quick beta.

Please be on the lookout for any issues with the Email Checker module, Weather module, UWP apps in the list of running applications, and pinning UWP apps to the dock/taskbar.

Also fixed an issue with some annual alarms where the next activation date was skipping one full year. Please check those if you have them, if the next activation date is wrong you need to 'Edit Alarm' and press Ok to properly reset it.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 2:34 pm 
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winstep wrote:
Ok, third and hopefully final beta of v19.2 released. This must necessarily be a quick beta.

Please be on the lookout for any issues with the Email Checker module, Weather module, UWP apps in the list of running applications, and pinning UWP apps to the dock/taskbar.

Also fixed an issue with some annual alarms where the next activation date was skipping one full year. Please check those if you have them, if the next activation date is wrong you need to 'Edit Alarm' and press Ok to properly reset it.

Not sure that this is beta related, however.
When detecting my location (weather module), as said before your program thinks I live in "London weather center". I type in the town where I live and select ok, but the weather 'Codes' dont change neither does the forcast. So where exactly does your program(weather module) get its location from??

Secondly if one leaves in the home town, and removes the weather codes the 'Weather module' displays NA.

Thirdly its not "Sumburgh Cape" in weather module its just "Sumburgh" or possibly "Sumburgh Airport" to be more precise. Assuming there is not another Sumburgh in the United Kingdom.

I dont think I will ever get a reply from weather.com to find out my weather code. Is there any other way of locating it? I would push or would like to see a Zipcode/Postcode, finder/locator the same as weather.com uses.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:18 pm 
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Ok, let's see if I can explain this in a way that can be understood:

I don't know how many different settlements, villages, cities and places there are in the world, but there are certainly hundreds of thousands. A database containing all these locations would run into several GB for sure.

As such, it is completely out of the scope of the Winstep weather module to list every single location on earth. It has an internal database with about 40,000 cities worldwide and their weather codes and that's as far as it can go.

Even the weather itself is not very granular. In a 20 mile radius there can be tens of differently named locations/places, but essentially and in practice they all share the same weather conditions because they all are within the same area.

Even if a weather service provides different codes for these different locations in that geographical area, more often that not all these different weather codes will then internally map to the SAME weather station, i.e.; all of them get weather conditions from the SAME place, so conditions reported for all these locations will be exactly the same. It's not like there is a weather station in every street corner. :)

Now, when you use the Winstep application for the first time or when you click the 'Get My Location' button, the Winstep application will attempt to determine your location based on your IP address (GEO IP location).

This by itself may already not be terribly accurate in some cases (and not at all if you are behind a VPN), as it basically depends on how your ISP distributes those same IP addresses. In some (rare) cases it can be completely off, e.g.; if your ISP maps that IP address to their central headquarters instead of your actual location.

Anyway, by and all, GEO IP location works, and it is certainly better than nothing. What the Winstep application gets from your IP address is a country code, a city name and, usually, also Latitude and Longitude coordinates.

Sometimes the GEO IP location service only returns lat and lon coordinates but no city name.

At this point the Winstep application is going to employ a handful of tricks and methods to try to find the associated weather code based on this information.

First, if it got a city name from the GEO IP location service, it searches the internal database of 39,000 cities. If it finds a direct match, then it has the correct weather code(s).

But if no match is found or the GEO IP service did not return a city name, things get more complicated: at this point it will try to use the MSN weather service to find a location\weather.com code based on your Latitude and Longitude coordinates.

If MSN returns a valid weather.com code then we are done, otherwise we must now use whatever city name MSN returned for those Lat and Lon coordinates to search Weather.com's own location search service.

As you can see, things might seem simple to you but what is actually happening behind the scenes is in fact extremely complicated.

It can also happen that at the end of all this effort we are simply unable to find a matching valid weather.com code for your location. If that happens, then the Winstep weather module will default to the capital city of your country (which is why you get 'London Weather Center', since you live in the UK). Again, better than nothing.

Now, you should understand that all this GEO IP location thingy is done as a *convenience* to the user. Not that long ago, the weather module would always default to NY, USA, and the user would have to *manually* select his country and the city closest to him in the Weather Module Settings panel.

So, what is the user to do if his exact location is not part of the internal 40,000 cities database? You can either select the location nearest to you that DOES exist in this database, or you can try to find a valid weather.com code for your particular location by yourself.

You can do the latter by going to the weather.com website, search for your location and then use the weather.com code listed in the URL in the address bar.

In the Weather Module Settings panel you then blank the METAR code text box, and replace the contents of the Weather.com code text box with the code you got. You can also edit the City name text box with the name of your city - the weather module won't care what the city name says, it only cares about METAR and Weather.com codes*.

* NOTE: there is one instance where the Weather module *will* try to use the city name you typed in: if both the METAR and Weather.com text boxes are blank, but this is not very reliable given any local and international spelling differences for the same city (for instance, capital city of Portugal is internationally known as Lisbon, but we locals call it Lisboa) and the possibility of multiple matches.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:53 pm 
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winstep wrote:
Ok, let's see if I can explain this in a way that can be understood:

Received. I see that the neighboring town is listed(see codes below website) and indeed if one does delete the weather codes and has this town listed it shows the weather.

I am a little at a loss, where is the weather code -:- I go to the site and type in my postcode and it shows the weather. Here is the url........
weather.com/en-GB/weather/today/l/5959da8eb246886bcad68960e86fd7bc05b52f4b825c035eca422bc0c1931ab522209d0c5cea92703de73ade15718a48

I hope you will see that a code does not exist in that... It may have existed in/at one time but I don't think any more.

A site you could try hooking up with is https://weather.codes/united-kingdom/
This lists at least 4 codes for Shetland. I have highlighted the UK in this, but it has codes for worldwide it seems. Perhaps as a long shot you could search this data, perhaps rather a tall order but I try to help constructively.

You mention my IP and searching of that, now IF I go to https://www.speedtest.net/ That site is able to locate my position, and fires up the nearest server for me, quite how it does it I don't know.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 7:06 pm 
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oOSGearOo wrote:
You mention my IP and searching of that, now IF I go to https://www.speedtest.net/ That site is able to locate my position, and fires up the nearest server for me, quite how it does it I don't know.


And so is the Winstep application, that is not the problem. The problem is that it cannot get a valid weather.com code for that location, so it defaults to a location it can: London.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2019 6:17 am 
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winstep wrote:
Just tweaking the UI a bit more.

Need your opinion, which do you like best for the Windows 10 UI icons? The icon style in Image A or that of Image B?

Image
Image A

Image
Image B

I'm a fan of the first, and think it better fits Windoze 10.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 6:44 am 
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Ok, v19.2 has now been officially released.

Check out the new 20th anniversary pricing HERE. :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 3:28 pm 
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I quite like the new 'light mode' for the UI - bit reminiscent of the old grey(-ish) UIs we used to have in most OSs. As for the icons, already stated pref for A previously. Last bits of test info for a bit as can't renew ATM.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:08 pm 
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winstep wrote:
Ok, v19.2 has now been officially released.

Check out the new 20th anniversary pricing HERE. :)


Wow!! Happy Anniversary Winstep!! Congratulations Jorge. It's been a long ride hah.


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.12?
PostPosted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:20 pm 
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Ah really like that light mode. All the mode choices are great for different theme colors. Thank you sir.


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