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Weather Underground redesign

wunderground.com

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Re: Weather Underground redesign

#12

Post by uvdiv »

adolph wrote: post #7
jonprins wrote: post #5

Is it just me, or is their choice of name a terrible branding decision? It's bothered me for quite a while. I'm surprised they haven't been lampooned on Fox News as being a terrorist weather outlet.

Wikipedia (I'm not certain if this is for real or not): Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was founded in 1995 as an offshoot of the University of Michigan's Internet weather database. The name is a reference to the 1960s militant radical terrorist student group the Weather Underground, which also originated at the University of Michigan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_(weather_se...

http://www.wunderground.com/about/background.asp

>The growing Internet weather program was given the name Weather Underground, a reference to the 1960's radical group that also originated at the University of Michigan, which had taken its name from the lyrics to Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows."

Re: Weather Underground redesign

#13

Post by blahedo »

baddox wrote: post #10

The redesign is visually pleasing, but it's no longer usable. I now have to scroll down to see the 5-day forecast. I switched my bookmark over to http://www.wund.com , the lite version.

On the main page, I thought it was nifty that it autodetected my location and gave the current weather, but then I couldn't find any link to actually find the forecast!

Then I thought to click on the name of the town. That gave me a page of which less than 1/3 was actual content (until I scrolled down). This seems like exceedingly poor design. Although, the actual "Forecast" div is reasonably compact, so there might be some URL hack you can do to jump straight to that.

It's too bad; I was a wunderground user for years until they did a site upgrade that kept causing browser crashes; I've been on weather.com for quite a while now, and this upgrade doesn't look good enough to entice me back.

Re: Weather Underground redesign

#16

Post by CapitalistCartr »

jonprins wrote: post #5

Is it just me, or is their choice of name a terrible branding decision? It's bothered me for quite a while. I'm surprised they haven't been lampooned on Fox News as being a terrorist weather outlet.

Its not just you. Weirds me out, too. Maybe its only those of us old enough to remember the original, in which case we might be the wrong demographic.

Re: Weather Underground redesign

#17

Post by billswift »

blahedo wrote: post #13
baddox wrote: post #10

The redesign is visually pleasing, but it's no longer usable. I now have to scroll down to see the 5-day forecast. I switched my bookmark over to http://www.wund.com , the lite version.

On the main page, I thought it was nifty that it autodetected my location and gave the current weather, but then I couldn't find any link to actually find the forecast! Then I thought to click on the name of the town. That gave me a page of which less than 1/3 was actual content (until I scrolled down). This seems like exceedingly poor design. Although, the actual "Forecast" div is reasonably compact, so there might…

I prefer Weather Underground, because their predictions are a bit more pessimistic than weather.com's, I would rather be prepared for a snow or rain that didn't happen than be caught unprepared by one that did.

Re: Weather Underground redesign

#18

Post by billswift »

hollerith wrote: post #3

Slow to load here. I waited 5 sec and gave up. Slowness is unlikely to be at my end because google loads as fast as ever.

I'm on dialup, so the difference is even more noticeable to me. The new page takes more than half again as long to load as the earlier version, and it was already pretty slow (too many ads and images).

Re: Weather Underground redesign

#20

Post by kylecordes »

baddox wrote: post #10

The redesign is visually pleasing, but it's no longer usable. I now have to scroll down to see the 5-day forecast. I switched my bookmark over to http://www.wund.com , the lite version.

"wund" has at least one defect in common with the main site's redesign: it requires clicking around to read the details of the 5-day forecast.

There is probably someone, or a group of someones, at WU who think they have improved things.

(edit: typo)

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