

Show HN: My project : Load and display multiple wind-speed forecasts on one page - derefnull
http://derefnull.org/wx

======
derefnull
In the spirit of "shipping it", I wanted to share this quick project that I
made for myself and my friends:
[http://derefnull.org/wx](http://derefnull.org/wx)

As an avid skydiver, I regularly check wind forecasts for multiple drop zones
to determine which location is most suitable for the day of jumping. I was
tired of manually entering each location each time I checked the weather
forecast, so I created this app to simplify the process.

This web app will render multiple wind-speed forecasts on a single page for
comparison. Once locations are entered in, the user can return to the page and
refresh the forecast with a single click.

The app is nearly all client side, which is a new paradigm for me. The only
server side component is a proxy script I made to get around a browser-side
issue ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-
origin_resource_sharing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-
origin_resource_sharing))

The locations are validated with the Google Geocode API, stored in a client-
side cookie (jquery.cookie), and rendered with Raphael JS. Weather forecasts
are provided by weather.gov. Additional UI goodies use twitter bootstrap and
some custom scripting as glue.

Note: this was written a modern browser (tested with apple safari, and google
chrome, IE 10)

Next iteration : client side app-building is fun, but I think I can improve
response time by moving much of the weather.gov queries server-side. This will
also allow me to add a slick "share these locations" feature to the app.

~~~
vukmir
Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me [Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64)
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu Chromium/28.0.1500.71
Chrome/28.0.1500.71 Safari/537.36]

JS console says:

    
    
       Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'firstChild' of null derefnull.org/wx/:290
       doParseWxXml derefnull.org/wx/:290
       forecastAsync_Update derefnull.org/wx/:148
       c jquery.js:4
       p.fireWith jquery.js:4
       k jquery.js:6
       r jquery.js:6

~~~
derefnull
Strange -- was that for a US-based location? I just tested it in windows based
firefox & debian based iceweasel and it seemed to work ok. I don't have a
Ubuntu system handy at the moment.

~~~
vukmir
No, a couple locations in Europe.

I've just tried it with two locations in the US and it works with no errors.
If I add to them a location in Europe there's an error:

    
    
       Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'firstChild' of null derefnull.org/wx/:290

~~~
derefnull
Ah ok -- that makes sense, as the data is sourced from weather.gov which
handles only weather data for the USA. Sorry about that :)

