SOTAwatch 2

This seems to be working really well Jon. Thanks very much for your considerable work in this development. I presume that currently SOTAwatch2 is reading the alerts and spots from the original SOTAwatch. If I were to post an alert on SOTAwatch 2, would SOTAwatch 1 read it? In fact I will now conduct a little experiment; after all this is what I am supposed to be doing during this beta phase!

The best bit is that I can read the reflector at work on SOTAwatch 2, whereas anything and everything Yahoo is blocked out by the City council servers here.

Experiment results: Both the old and new SOTAwatch read off each other. Or probably they both contribute to the same system that they both read from!

In the fullness of time, do you intend to move over to this grey background, or continue with the original matching background of the database, website and sotawatch?

At present, SOTAwatch 2 displays to about 1cm beyond the right hand edge of my screen on one computer I use. I presume there’s a way for a website to detect screen settings and adjust itself accordingly? I don’t know how to do this, and that is why my own website only displays properly on 1024 x 768 screen resolution.

Overall, while seeing the merits in both, I think I prefer the original single line displays of the Alerts and Spots. I prefer to have more lines visible, and the loss of the reflector panel, but it’s a tough call as I say, I can see big positives in both approaches. Hmmm, I kind of like having the “Latest reflector” panel on the same screen actually… Not sure.

Thanks again Jon, and regards to all contributors on here,

Tom M1EYP

Now testing to see if the 30 second auto updates on SW2 also update the reflector panel…

Seems that works too, although still need to see someone else’s post appear on a 30 sec update to be sure.

On the mouseover on my callsign, it says “not registered” even when I am logged in. It seems to know my QTH though, as it tells me the distances and bearings of each summit on their individual pages. However, on these pages, it doesn’t tell me how many times I have activated or chased these summits.

The original SOTAwatch seems to have forgotten my name as well! This is on both submissions, both the one I made via SW2 and the one I made via SW1.

In reply to M1EYP:

In the fullness of time, do you intend to move over to this grey
background, or continue with the original matching background of the
database, website and sotawatch?

Personally, I feel that the zig-zag background needlessly reduces the clarity of text.

At present, SOTAwatch 2 displays to about 1cm beyond the right hand
edge of my screen on one computer I use. I presume there’s a way for
a website to detect screen settings and adjust itself accordingly? I
don’t know how to do this, and that is why my own website only
displays properly on 1024 x 768 screen resolution.

I have designed SW2 to be 800 pixels wide but it had crept a bit. I have pinched it back in so it shouldn’t bleed off the edge of your screen anymore.

Overall, while seeing the merits in both, I think I prefer the
original single line displays of the Alerts and Spots. I prefer to
have more lines visible, and the loss of the reflector panel, but it’s
a tough call as I say, I can see big positives in both approaches.
Hmmm, I kind of like having the “Latest reflector” panel on the same
screen actually… Not sure.

I think it is very important to have the reflector mandatory. However, I thought that perhaps I could create a 800 pixel / 1000 pixel switch for those with higher screen resolutions that would put the spots & comments on a single line. And perhaps a 1200 pixel for those with 19" monitors and then we could put the reflector posts onto one line as well!

73, Jon

It now fits nicely on an 800 pix screen width, with a bit of a gap on 1024 width. The reflector/stats panels do now creep over the right edge of the spots/info though.

In reply to M1EYP:

The reflector/stats panels do now creep over the right
edge of the spots/info though.

I’m surpised. Which browser are you using?

IE6.0 at the current location. SW2 now looks slightly wider, and now the reflector panel does not cover part of the spot frequencies. It is right at the right edge of the “ssb”.

In reply to M1EYP:

Yes, I’ve just had a look in IE6 on another computer and I can see what you are saying. Ok, I’ll try and address this. I have been testing for IE7 & Firefox up to now. The problem is is that you can’t have IE6 and IE7 easily installed on the same computer.

In reply to GM4ZFZ:

OK, I think that’s fixed the IE6 problem. Tom could you have a look and confirm?

Ta
Jon

Good now at the division between the spots and the reflector panel. RHS of pages now creep just beyond RHS of screen. Seems enough redundant space on LHS to pull it back though.

Will I need to change all the links on my website when SW1 is turned off, or will the old URL forward?

I have lots of links of the type:

http://sotawatch.sota.org.uk/summit.php?summit=GW/NW-028

In reply to M1EYP:

Technically yes. However, I suspect when SW1 is turned off I could map the sotawatch.sota.uk sub domain to www.sotawatch.org without too much trouble in which case you could leave your links as they are!

Thanks for the reply Jon. That is good to know. I will try to find a way for MS FrontPage to go through my entire website, replacing all the "sotawatch.sota.org.uk"s with "sotawatch.org"s if possible anyway, but at least I know I can relax and take my time to do it. Will the extensions to the URLs be the same?

…but I will wait until the ‘beta’ is no more of course!

I notice that while “www.sotawatch.org…” brings one successfully to this site, leaving out the ‘www’, ie “sotawatch.org” takes you to the page of 123-reg.co.uk, and a note saying that “www.sotawatch.org” has been registered on behalf of a client. Is there a way to have it so that you still get here without the ‘www’?

Very low priority (if at all), but just something I noticed.

In reply to M1EYP:

Thanks Tom, well spotted!
Fixed.

Still the same situation here. I am taking care to refresh, open new IE windows etc.

In reply to M1EYP:

DNS can often take 24 hours to 48 hours to take effect. Have another try tomorrow. Mine is ok, but it is possible I didn’t request http://sotawatch.org until after I had made the mod to the DNS and the server and so whatever DNS server looked it up for me was doing so for the first time and got the fresh settings.

73, Jon

In reply to GM4ZFZ:

All working now. Now you get here even when you mit the “www.”.