Met Office cuts off Linux users with new weather widgets Linux users face increased inconvenience getting a weather forecast from March onwards when the Met Office will withdraw its web-based weather gadgets and replace them with desktop widgets – for Windows and Mac only. Previously the Met Office's Firefox and iGoogle weather gadgets allowed anyone with internet access to check …
Even if the BBC actively blocked Linux users you have the choice of sources where your weather comes from - bbc, wettercom (A German source on less), etc
Speaking of KDE 4.8 came out the other day - its the most useable desktop I have ever tried.
Its faster than Windows 7 on the same machine and is in my opinion looks prettier and is more useable - the best thing is its free !! And in 6 months it will improve again (how long until windows 8 is out ... And that doesn't look like its going to be an improvement at all - more like Unity.)
That matches my experience with Kubuntu 11.10 and KDE 4.8 loaded. Holy !@#$ it's gotten QUICK! Since KDE is crossplatform, have to wonder how many people on Win8 will switch to it for a default WM instead of Metro? KDE could be the new Norton Desktop for Windows (back in the Win3.1 days, before Norton completely went to pot).
But the relevant part to the story: if you do your widgets platform independent, you don't have to spend so much development resources redoing everything for Windows, Android and iEverything. AIR is dead, Flash is dead, and a Windows ONLY policy is also dead due to the popularity of iPhone/iPad/Android. Nobody has enough money to pay developers for the same work on three platforms. Port it to HTML5 and associated standard tech and be done with it. Its just business at the end of the day, and Windows only costs too much when you have so many people on other platforms also hitting it, and the CFO is going to have something to say at some point. As a side benefit for those of us that are more flexible on our OS dance cards, Linux is now an unexpected beneficiary of Apple and Google's mobile success's. :)
So before this you had to use Firefox or iGoogle in order to use the weather widgets. Now you have to use Windows or Mac. Linux users complaining now get no sympathy from me. Presumably they were perfectly happy that people who didn't use FF or iGoogle couldn't use these little tools before.
Anyhow these are just extras, the forecast is still available from the website. All you need is to bookmark your chosen forecast page and you can fire it up right from your desktop. Hardly difficult is it?
When you're developing this stuff you have to draw the line somewhere.
You publish an API, one 'proof-of-concept' implementation of your own and tell everybody else "Here's an API. Use it with the following conditions, we promise to publish any changes at [place] before changing this public API. Enjoy."
- The conditions might be non-commercial or "zero-cost app" use only, defined maximum hit rate, must give credit etc.
Within a few weeks there will be multiple widgets and apps for every single gadget, operating system and desktop environment used by more than one geek. Probably widgets for ones only used by one geek...
This will have cost you the same as making a widget for a single operating system.
Or you could use a proprietary system that's going end-of-life pretty soon, and end up paying to develop your own widgets several times while supporting very little.
But you haven't explained why they should publish an API. Firstly they have a website and that's all they really need. Secondly an API giving access to their data would not be in the tax payer's interest. The met office sell forecasts to commercial concerns, if the data were freely available they would lose income and the tax payer would have to pay more towards their funding.
Who don't use dogshit, bug ridden, bloated, insecure Adobe manure and are a damn sight more accurate.
Agree with many of the comments above, who needs this crap when you are running KDE CWP, sadly for you windows folks MS foisted a half assed buggy widget system on you.
Ever eyeball weather.com? Look at the page source for my local weather, for example:
http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Sonoma+CA+USCA1076
Worst bit of monstrosity web code I've ever seen ... has been for over a decade. How much HTML, exactly, does it take to provide the image that that particular page is trying to convey? Nevermind the white-space ...
I don't see this being an issue for any *nix geek worth his salt. All you have to do is hit up WireShark or similar to sniff on the traffic sent to/from the widget and it shouldn't take too long to whip up a native client written in python or something...
Worst case scenario: you can always run AIR under Wine.
FACT: "The desktop Widget requires Adobe AIR version 2.5 or above" - http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/desktopwidget.html
FACT: "The last version to support desktop Linux distributions is AIR 2.6. AIR 2.6 is available from the AIR Archive." - http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/408/kb408084.html
AIR 2.6 download for linux is here: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/853/cpsid_85304.html
This took me about 5 mins to establish. This is a sensationalist report with a list of kneejerk comments. Please can we grow up?
To everyone who is proposing a technical fix: No.
I don't want a picosecond of taxpayer-funded time spent on suporting a system used by about 1% of people. Yes they should probably ditch the apps/widgets/whatever for everyone else too and just make sure their web page is good, but even if they don't, it doesn't justify time spent supporting a small, willful minority.
Linux on the desktop is about 5%. That is still a shitload of people. Tell you what, disabled people are less of a percentage than that, should we cancel all those ridiculous disabled rights stuff?
It's not just the MetOffice BTW, you used to be able to get OS maps on Linux, but a recent move to Silverlight (Yes, Silverlight - wtf) means their change of service has actually DECREASED it's usage You really have to wonder who makes these decisions...oh...Microsoft.
"Tell you what, disabled people are less of a percentage than that, should we cancel all those ridiculous disabled rights stuff?"
Of course not. People don't choose to have disabilities, and there's some chance they're not obnoxious, whining narcissists who just take the easy route and blame MS for everything. Because they know on this site the majority will agree with them and they can feel validated.
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I'm a Linux user but couldn't give a toss about the change, largely for the reasons you specify (never that bothered about the weather in quite that level of realtime anyway).
What does bother me is another Tax-payer funded org going the route of AIR. As others have said, why not a nice simple API containing the basics?
Someone mentioned Dominos? I'm hungry now!
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That the Met office produces results that are of use to anybody at all.
Even those using a "wide range of operating systems" (numbering two).
Adobe dropping "support" for Linux is a good thing. One less vector for malware attack squashed. Adobe; just say NO! I avoid their festering bloatware (I mean, seriously; 80 MB of software for a PDF reader?) that's riddled with holes waiting to be exploited and requires a constant Internet connection to download patches every other day.
It's only their shiny presence in the view of the "decision makers" (not the people who have to clean up the mess) that allows them to get away with buffing their mediocity for another generation of products that use more resources to do even less for the user; in a locked-down, proprietary way.
It beats me why anyone, on any platform would want to check the Met Office for weather. Aside from the display getting worse and worse, as they dumb it down, you're better off by looking out of the window. There are scads more weather forecasters out there who all seem to give more accurate and more meaningful forecasts than the Met office. Personally I get my forecasts from yr.no, and if Norway can give more accurate forecasts that the met office, we should close them down and save ourselves the money.
"Unfortunately we had to stop providing weather gadgets for Linux Operating Systems because Adobe withdrew their support for Linux."
What a sadly oblivious remark. The Met didn't "have" to become a footsoldier in Adobe's plans for world domination, it just sleepwalked into that role. That unconscious action is trumped only by the failure of the Met to realize how it's been humiliated by allowing its public face to be governed by an overseas corporation.
When is it worth becoming a disposable bullet point in some rapacious marketer's business plan? Think first: "Is this tool really so great that it's worth surrendering my destiny?"
I don't really need to go much further, the title says it all.
But I will anyway.
I use one Air app at work, the dreaded 'Streamtime' work schedule time sheet monitoring BS. It's so unbelievably slow and bloated I get angry whenever I have to use it in anger.
There's is Sweet FA in that application that couldn't be done 10x better using a web browser and standards compliant HTML / CSS / Javascript.
Seriously, Linux Desktop users will be missing *nothing* but massive headaches, every other day "Adobe Air needs to update itself, Y/N?"
Just firing up an Air application will probably use as much resources as Gnome itself. If you have an electricity usage monitor, you'll see it spike just hovering over the application icon.
It's sad that Met Office are going down this route, but I can bet it's nothing more than their lead developer knows how to create Air apps and is a complete and utter (... insert word of your choice here ...)
As has been pointed out, WTF are they doing? Sure, use Air, but provide a damn XML feed that *anything* can read.
Like DUH.
You could claim 1% of users don't matter, but that would be just really really dumb, as you can bet that 1% of Linux users has the most *active* weather geeks you could ever care to meet. I've yet to meet a Linux dev who doesn't have at least a passive interest in the more technical aspects of weather forecasting - it's just in the nature of a tinkerer to lean in that kinda direction.
I'll stop now. I'm getting angry. I may write to my MP. He's also a twat like the lead dev at Met Office. I didn't just say that, did I? Joke. It's all a joke.
If you want to be heard about AIR on Linux, go to the Adobe site and make a suggestion.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
There are already requests for resumption of AIR development on Linux, so you can just dig / promote them.
Maybe Adobe will eventually listen if enough Linux users do it. Better than just whinging elsewhere where they will definitely take no notice.
looking for $olution$. Whether Linux is 5% or 1% matters little; but they shouldn't have been so quick to write off a more generic approach!
Many of my friends and I prefer various Linux distributions to a Windows environment. Even my 81 year old Mother loathes Windows - including XP or Win7. The update reboots, overzealous eye-candy, continual mousing around, and even defragging (still !?!) detract from a more positive user experience - especially with older/cheaper hardware. Though MEPIS isn't known for it's bleeding edge; it's reliability, ease of use, and a good support community without the extra co$t "gotchas" keeps her happy. ;)
http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/webaccessibility/lawsandstandards/Pages/uk_law.aspx
I'd have to spend some time digging up the URLs but a discussion I had with the OIC and Cabinet Information Office a couple of years back made things _very_ clear that a very dim view is taken of uk.gov websites which are browser-discriminatory. (or which don't comply with w3c guidelines).
I'd say a few formal complaints are in order (OIC are toothless but the Cabinet Information Office is a different matter)
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