91Èȱ¬

I've been using the Beta version of this for a while and agree it is much better. The three hourly weather maps are most helpful for planning trips and walks etc.

It's currently down, however. I trust this is a glitch while the sites are migrated?

About time too. The weather section of the 91Èȱ¬ site (unlike the rest of it) is absolute garbage.

The new website doesn't recognise Wolverhampton, thinks it's in Staffordshire, and gives a forecast for Stafford. It shows links to 91Èȱ¬ Staffordshire websites instead of those for the Black Country.

Richard, the Beta site is looking great. It's very clean and easily customisable.

I was looking forward to seeing it 'live' this evening, but unfortunately 'computer says no'. I can just imagine how busy everyone must be right now getting the new site up and running.

The changing banners and background colours are a very nice touch. I notice the 'new' symbols are in place too. (I have a bit of background to the symbol designs at if anyone's interested).

I hope you manage to track down the gremlins. And good luck with the launch to all concerned!

Mike Afford

I like the new beta, but keep the old version available too please!

I like the old style symbols and its probably the quickest possible way of getting a weather forcast. -Thanks

Whoops!

Richard - great looking site, a bit improvement on the old one, and much more informative.

Just wonder if you could check something - if you look at the weather map, click on the button that says KEY, and look at the gradient bar for snow. Are those colours the right way round? It's just that it seems to me somewhat unintuitive to have pale blue (a colour similar to rain) as heavy snow, and pure white as light snow.

Perhaps I'm not appreciating the details of how all these colours work together, but just wondered if that was a mistake.

How do I, with the lovely new site, get a pressure map of the UK?

Richard:
When I was over to the LINK....The new weather site was working....

~Dennis Junior~

I don't see much difference... although I don't really use it that often. One comment I would make though, the 91Èȱ¬ insists on giving German temperature measurements (Fahrenheit) to those who want them but what about giving us a choice to have wind speeds in m/s rather than mph (like the rest of the world except the USA use)?

Hmm. It's OK and quite pretty, but takes some getting used to. I quite liked the fact that you could previously see high and low temperatures at a glance. Took quite a lot of clicking about to realise that low temps for the next 4 days would only appear in the "night weather" bit.

If anyone from Auntie actually reads these posts, could they please ask the 91Èȱ¬ techies if they can support the UTF-8 character set on these threads.

The software used to post our comment is supposed to support this, but - as implemented - only only supports the basic ASCII-127 character set.

This means that the symbols for GBP and EUR cannot be displayed, along with "smart quotes" as often used on media websites and for people who use Microsoft Word as a pre-editor as well as all accented characters, some of which are need in the English language, such as the 1st E in fiance and fiancee, for example.

It is now at least six months since we have been asking for this basic improvement, which really shouldn't be a challenge for a school-leaver.

See my #84 on the New ways into blogs thread and my #75 on the same thread containing more about HTML.

On topic, the new beta looks OK to me but as others say a modern mapping of locations is needed based on current Local Government geography throughout the UK.

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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Hi , having watched the weather reports and linked news with regards ..elderly stuck indoors , traffic stuck on roads and salt running dry ... can SOMEONE please ask the question , WHERE/WHAT has our UK based Armed Services been during this climatic crisis ... no ... I dont mean the ones serving abroad .. I mean the ones stuck inside some army barrucks twindling their thumbs [at tax payers expense] when they could be drafted in to flipping well help ... they [especially the REME] have at their disposal some of the most suffisticated recovery equipment ever produced and whats it been doing over the last week .. collecting dust !!
I odviously have singled out the Army but theres plenty the Navy & Airforce can do as well ... why is it the States have the National Guard to call upon in times of a climatic crisis where'as we dont even call upon the Territiorial Army to help ? please investigate and shame the Armed Forces into getting their boots wet !!
Yours
Greg R
Not too far from Tidworth Barrucks but yet the A303 is still impassable !

The main site still links to 'old' weather site

John

Why don't they use SEA WATER supplimented with salt to spray onto the roads?

It seem logical to me and theres plenty sea water around.

Answer to No. 17 - You might find that the transport is sliding around on a few fish and iced jelly fish.

Please could the 91Èȱ¬ Weather Department do something to stop the television visual maps swimming around making some people quite giddy (too much movement over a concentrated area to fast) with long commentary giving so much information in one go, that it cannot all be taken in by the majority of viewers?

Just what the world needs, another weather channel. But this one will be different. To cut costs, 91Èȱ¬ will not hire meteorologists or reporters. It will just rely on viewers calling in and e-mailing video and still photographs. It's cheaper and more accurate that way. Peter Harrocks below said 35,000 viewers called in about the snow storm last week. So all it will take is people to answer the phones, sort the e-mial, and a presenter. Why not just go on the web and get it there. Ooops, that would cost too little.

@MarcusAureliusII, #20
Amusing and all, but "weather channel" - what are you talking about? ;)

It isn't going to be any more accurate than the Met Office [using same data] so it's only eye candy. 5 day forecasts will still be as inaccurate.
Bet it cost a fortune to set up.

Have been using the Beta since it virtually began, I have had no problems at all with it.
It gave me all the info that I needed, then went outside and it was completely different....STILL waiting for the snow (live in Blackpool)
Saying that I have only just realised that it is no longer the Beta version

What is the point of having the UK Snowfall map - if it is still showing FRIDAY's snow on Monday morning???? Does the 91Èȱ¬ not have weather over a weekend?

Any further update as to when the new site will be back in action for those currently arriving on the old site?

Okay, so I now have to activate the Flash plugin every time I want to get a weather forecast. Great, that's a disincentive to visit the site for a start, and will really please iPod touch and iPhone users. ;o)

What, exactly, was wrong with the old-fashioned pictograms? They showed instantly what the forecast was, be it cloud, rain or snow. We now get some amorphous mass of colour shifting over the landmass, punctuated by rain or snow animations, which really does nothing to give me a clear indication of the weather forecast - and don't get me started on the subtle darkening for the night-time forecast!

I've disliked the broadcast weather maps since they were launched. It strikes me as so much movement and animation simply for the sake of it.

Clearly serious gremlins to be still active five days later. The new site is still available, though, through the beta link.

I've been using the new site for a while: it took me a little time to get used to it, but now I wouldn't want to go back. One new feature which is always worth a smile is that you can easily compare the current forecast with the recorded current actual weather - they hardly ever match up.

Noooooooo!!!

The old site was - by far - the best place on the web for a quick, at-a-glance, local forecast for the coming day. I loved it.

A simple grid, of hour-by-hour forecasts, with simple weather symbols. So simple, so perfect. One glance, and you knew what was coming.

A link to an old-style page would be VERY welcome here...

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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I've been sticking with the old site as long as possible, but now it's finally gone. I don't find the new page so easy to look at. With the old 5-day forecast page, I could see at a glance the whole week's forecast for where I am. The symbols were bold, the temperatures large and colour-coded, max and min temperatures were there, all in one table. Now the new symbols may be artistic, but they are not as clear. The rest of the information is just displayed as small text. And I have to scroll through several different sections to see all the information I could see at a glance.

I used to use the 91Èȱ¬'s weather site in preference to others because I liked the way all the information was there at a glance. I'll now re-evaluate the alternatives, and may even consider writing some sort of script to re-format the page to look like the old one!

On the whole I am very dissapointed with the new look website, it appears to be all show and no go.

The replacement of the original weather symbols in the 12hr, 24hr and 4 day forecast is a visual disaster, with the previous layout it was so clear to interepret the forecast at a quick glance.

Now there are 33 weather images that look mostly identical.

There is no colour associated with temperature and no wind direction arrow's.

There is an eblog stephend.com october 7th 2008 (i will be surprised if the bbc doesnt censor this!) that illustrates this beautifully.

The uk map forecast's look like they could be an improvement but they never seem to work. Also there are no wind maps and no pressure charts. Why do they think people dont want this information.

The atlantic pressure charts are the most useful image for determining what weather to expect.

The bbc should be leading the way by providing this information, not dumbing down this service.

I hope the bbc will re-evaluate what they have actually done here and roll back to some of the original features.

Synoptic chart.
Please.
I know many folk find them confusing and scary, but for those of us who took the time to learn how to read them, they can give us the current and expected weather situation at a glance much more effectively than any number of maps, pictures and graphics. I use the Met office one at . Simple, effective and as accurate as any forecast can be. I'm glad the my local Look North (Newcastle) weather folk recognise the value of these charts and still use them in the local forecast, even though they have all but gone from the national forecasts.

What's happened to the temperature squares on the main map?

Now I have to go to temperature > key and compare colour swatches. Insane.

Bring back the temperatures on the main 'general' map please.

Please bring back the maps with Temperatures and Wind speed/direction. Without these the charts are very bland and do not portray a lucid picture of the forecast.

Wake up 91Èȱ¬ weather - I get the the feeling you are smugly pleased with yourselves and are ignoring many of the valid points in this blog. I too will be looking elsewhere for my weather if nothing changes.

I agree - it's so longwinded to have to go to different maps to check cloud cover and temperature - and presumably eventually windspeed. I HATE the colour coding - 3 degrees means something instantly - "what was pale green again? What exact shade of pale green? - oh forget it." What about colour-blind people? Can we have the numbers back please? Or better, can we just have a link to the old version for people who want info, not style?

Plus, I try and avoid Flash because of all the animated ads it brings with it.

The changes to the 91Èȱ¬ Weather site are for the worst and after 9 years I am ceasing to use the page daily. I cannot better Jonathan's post :

'I don't find the new page so easy to look at. With the old 5-day forecast page, I could see at a glance the whole week's forecast for where I am. The symbols were bold, the temperatures large and colour-coded, max and min temperatures were there, all in one table. Now the new symbols may be artistic, but they are not as clear. The rest of the information is just displayed as small text. And I have to scroll through several different sections to see all the information I could see at a glance.'

If that was not enough my local town page has disappeared to be replaced by a town 10 miles away.

Please remember the old adage 'If it ain't broke don't fix it ' ! The best sites are the ones that do not regularly seek to upgrade hte main format simply because it's technically possible to do so.

The new site is dreadful; I would normally give some constructive feedback on a new site, but this implementation just seems to fail on all counts.

The silence is deafening. Emails go unanswered and nobody pays attention to this page.

What has happened to the 91Èȱ¬ Weather site? I waited and waited to see if what I supposed were errors in the map presenter to be fixed. It now seems from reading the rest of the posts here, that there are no fixes and this is the way it is supposed to work!!!! Very disappointing.

One thing I don't understand is why when the Key button is presses, it shows a series of keys to information that never seems to get displayed in the Weather chart it self. When will we see pressure charts in the local weather charts?

Yes the block pictures with Sun, Rain, Clouds in them are okay, but overall I am not sure that the usage if this site has been thought through enough. I may be missing some relevant information on how to use this site, however, according to the help file, it should be there!

"What does the UK temperature chart show?

Temperature charts show the temperatures expected for...

What do 'pressure charts' show?

The white lines on the charts (isobars) join together places..."

Seems there is more in the help file than in the Map Presenter itself.

Disappointing.

Arrrrgh! What have you done to the weather website?! Previously I could get a quick rough idea of what the weather & temperature would be like where I am or where I'm going over the next 5 days, or even a detailed 24hour forecast. Now I have to look at two different maps to get weather and temperature and skip through several point on the scroll bar thingy.

I used to be able to access it via my mobile phone, I daren't even try now. After years and years of using the 91Èȱ¬ weather website I'm switching to weather.co.uk

I no longer consult the useless faffy new site, so am looking for a substitute. Here's a suggestion: couldn't someone (one of the newspaper websites?) use Met Office data to construct a weather site similar to the old 91Èȱ¬ one, showing progressive cloud cover, temperature (in numbers) and windspeed on one map? I'd be willing to pay a modest annual subscription just to have a useful weather page available.

Can't believe you've changed it from a nice clean, simple, fast page to this cluttered, confusing, bland mess!

The more sophisticated weather graphics just aren't as obvious as the old, incredibly simple graphics before and it's no longer clear at all which location you're currently viewing - it's in the same font size as the rest of the page! I also miss the little details like the coloured temperature figures and the minimum temperature display...

Having the general map on the same page is useful, but I think most people will miss this with it being necessary to navigate through the clutter to get to it.

I too find the new site really bad.
I can get used to the way that the next 24 hours is displayed but the maps are really bad.

For instance the other day the map of South Wales showed blobs of white on it. What were these? Eventually I discovered that they were either fog or snow. On my screen the fog and snow graduations in the key both look the same - a consistent white from light to heavy. It is impossible to tell the difference between them or the intensity.

Additionally I still hate the way that the maps show cloud. This was introduced on the TV forecast first of all a while ago and I still can't understand it. It is impossible to tell the difference between cloudy areas and sunny areas - a slight difference in brightness of a brown colour really doesn't do it. Is this meant to represent the ground colour? It would be better if the colour was green to represent the actual ground colour.

I have my website and used to link to the 91Èȱ¬ weather as a primary source. I have now changed the link to Yahoo Weather as it is much easier to grasp quickly what the weather forecast is.

You're trying to be too clever.

The site does look so much nicer, but I'm afraid I have to agree with many of the others commenting - somehow, it seems just less useful. There's too much going on each page. Seeing my weather animated isn't a big priority (OK, so it's cos my geography is too bad for those maps to be much use). Also, I'm disappointed that there is no 5 day forecast to scan, even though that's what the link from the 91Èȱ¬page says. Did you really have to drop a day cos of the page grid? Ouch.
On area forecast pages, why is the summary in the sidebar - under the "My Weather" and all the other stuff? Surely a summary is useful higher up the page?
The (lovely) banner background flips about depending on where I am in the site. Looks like you've set the image to sync with the time, but only on favourite locations. What's with that?

Looking forward to improvements and seeing how user feedback is factored into further development.

It took me a while to become acclimatised (sorry) to the new site, but until I found this blog yesterday and read all the comments I'd been assuming that the fact that I had no maps at all but merely a blank grey window was due to some sort of teething troubles/ongoing glitch. Since then I've e-mailed the Powers That Be and checked the Flash and javascript stuff in my XP/IE re the help page but to no avail. Does anyone have any bright ideas please? I miss being able to check if it's raining over my ex-wife and not over me.

Feedback from this user on the new weather site:
- I'm slightly colour blind, so the temperature tab is fairly useless. Good old-fashioned numbers (and on the same tab as forecast) would be great.
- It's a pain having to flick between Past 12 hrs and Forecast tabs. One map (and no tabs) with past, present and future (and temperature) would be perfect.
- There is no indication of wind speed on the maps or where it will be blowing from.
- On the Atlantic map it would be really neat to superimpose the pressure map onto the Forecast. But don't EVER remove the pressure map - it conveys so much information so concisely. However I do agree with the decision to remove the UK pressure map, which couldn't convey the 'General Situation', as it used to be called.

Oh, and another thing: where has the UV index gone?

It's all very well making the site look pretty, but I usually visit it for the purposes of obtaining information, not for the purposes of being impressed by someone's graphic design flair. Please could we have the UV index back, even if you think it somehow spoils the look? I burn very easily and like to spend my weekends doing the garden, so the UV index is an essential feature for me.

One point to note about the new site is that it's layout does not sit well with mobile devices - the beeb is wedded to ancient, proprietary technologies (flash?), how on earth do these people get and keep their jobs. This isn't the future - it's a vanity project for the nerds.

I must say I find the updated bbc weather online a complete and utter
pointless excercise.
What a joke to say it has improved..!
Can't find the local, the UK or the European pressure charts.
before it was possible to find a five day forecast for a place in europe,
(eg. Malaga airport) but that option has now gone.
I fail to see how this can be described as an improvement...!!

Just change it all back will you and stop tinkering
with things that work fine...!

The new weather site is useless. Much of the best functionality of the previous version has been removed (i.e. the ability to choose cloud/radar/satellite view and then animate the sequence over time, including predictions). These were the best parts, it allowed me to get a really good feel for the likelihood of rain and set it above other weather sites. It looks like you've dumbed it down. Typical.

PLEASE BRING THE OLD SITE BACK

WHY NO TEMPERATURES????? Orangey yellow tells me sweet FA.

I'll be going elsewhere for my weather from now on. The new site is very poor - did anybody designing it actually ask users what they wanted and what they thought of the final result? A waste of 91Èȱ¬'s licence fee.

I have also complained about the changes to 91Èȱ¬ weather online here:
/complaints/
From now on I will shall use other sites for weather information.

I'd also like to complain about the new requirement for flash to view weather maps. It's a false assumption that flash is universally available. Adobe does not produce flash binaries for a broad selection of platforms and thus the new requirement for flash removes the ability to view weather maps for a broad selection of users. At a minimum the old behavior should retained where flash is not detected instead of just asking to user to install flash.

It does not make any difference, the weather predictions are, at best, only 60% accurate for more than 12 hours ahead. A forecast for a week ahead is just a joke. If you don't believe me, just record the weeks forecast on "91Èȱ¬ Country File" and look at it again a week later!

I have a strange problem with the new weather pages - I can get the maps to display using Firefox, Opera and Chrome ... but I can't see them using Internet Explorer - just a grey oblong! I'm using Vista on a laptop with all available updates. I've uninstalled and reinstalled IE7, IE8 and Flash to no effect.
All suggestions welcome!
Second point - if you don't like the new layout, then take a look at the mobile version on:
/weather/mobile
You can see 24 hour and 5 day forecasts that can be absorbed in a glance rather than the multi-screen muddle of the regular layout.
B

Are you just waiting until we get sick of complaining so that you can say to yourselves "Oh they've got used to it now."?

PLEASE can we have some kind of response. The option of seeing the old format would be easy and cheap, and would satisfy everyone. Come on, we're sick of waiting!

I would also like to complain about the new format 91Èȱ¬ Weather website.

The page is slow to load and information is not clear.

Regarding the unclear layout, I have tried to get used to it and still can't.

How about having a small poll button placed on the page and ask users if they prefer the old layout or the new one?

Looks like the 91Èȱ¬ have now washed their hands of the whole thing and are happy with their 90% finished website.

I bet the Met Office have seen a big rise in internet traffic to their site WITH TEMPERATURES.

I suspect no one from the 91Èȱ¬ actually looks at these blogs, hence the lack of response. I finally decided to lodge a complaint about the new weather page, and the response included advising me to read about the changes in the Editors blogs, i.e. here!

I was also told: "... in designing it we've taken our audience's feedback and looked at which parts of the site they visit most. Where possible, we've reflected these trends in the changes. Technology has also developed since the Weather site was first created and we've been able to take advantage of this to try to improve your experience of our site." I was also told to "leave feedback for the weather team", which of course I had already done, like the rest of us but again I doubt if they read it.

The final comment was: "We're guided by the feedback we receive and to this end I'd like to assure you that I've registered your complaint on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for the web team responsible for the site and also their senior management. It ensures that your points are circulated and considered across the 91Èȱ¬. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future content."

Maybe if more people actually lodged complaints? But it may just be on a par with those recorded telephone messages that recite "Your call is important to us" as they keep you hanging on.

Could someone let us know what other webpages the team responsible for producing the new 91Èȱ¬ weather pages have done? It would be interesting to know.

It's nice to see that your web designers cut their teeth on Mr. Men-style design. Now they've had a play and practiced making round-cornered squares, perhaps it's time to put them through the next phase of their education: adolescence.

At this rate you might be able to come up with a web site for grown-ups before global warming takes the summer heat waves into the 40s (degrees C and 2040s).

Why is so much credibility given to script-kiddies who have little knowledge of or interest in grown-up information, presented in grown-up ways to a grown-up audience.

Tip: when commissioning web work, if the bidders are all in their 20s, with the odd 30+ member with boy-band spikey hair, put them on the don't-call-us-we'll-call-you pile and look for a company not made up of immature, self-proclaimed 'design guru' boys. (Nothing wrong with being in 20s... but do look for ones who are literate and educated beyond fashion and 'image' and 'branding').

Why does Lisbon or the Algarve, not appear on the 91Èȱ¬ WORLD WEATHER?

"We're guided by the feedback we receive and to this end I'd like to assure you that I've registered your complaint on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for the web team responsible for the site and also their senior management. It ensures that your points are circulated and considered across the 91Èȱ¬. The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future content.""

They say that in EVERY complaint. I contacted them about Jonathan Legard's woeful F1 commentary and got the same paragraph.

Still waiting for temperatures in figures on the main map.

Just adding my voice to the other many posted comments about this new weather site... where are the map TEMPERATURES! OK I can see the key, but have you considered how awkward this is? I'm not colour blind myself, but I can imagine this would be very hard to use if I was - aren't all websites these days supposed to be accessible by all? Come on 91Èȱ¬, sort it out.

I am very disappointed at the lack of response to the many previous comments, most of which are constructive and aimed at helping the 91Èȱ¬ to provide a better weather web site.
My most recent frustration is to find that the pressure charts still do not indicate the time the chart is valid, and now they seem to be missing frontal systems. It just seems to get worse!
Surely it is not too much to ask of the 91Èȱ¬ that they either make improvements to the site along the lines that so many have suggested, or at least provide some feedback as to why they are persevering with a site that is, in the eyes of many, inferior to the previous one.

To sum up: the 'revamped' weather page is a complete mess. Please fix it / revert to the old page design.

I have to say I find the website incredibly frustrating. Whoever though that it was a good ideas to use the same colour for frost as you would also use for rain was having a joke surely ?

I notice that that on Wednesday morning, where I lived (Norwich), we are covered in a sky blue colour. How do I know if this signifies rain or a frost ? Ridiculous.