Note: These "site news" historical posts come from the original data sources in the proto-blog that debuted on the Q2 website in May 1997.
Wednesday 3 September 1997
World Clock feature added to city list (11:30 EDT)
The site's international city list now displays each city's current local time.
Thursday 4 September 1997
Site Map Appears (19:00 EDT)
Finally, Dave has gotten off his duff and added a map to this site. It's crude but effective.
Monday 8 September 1997
World weather linked dynamically (13:00 EDT)
We have added dynamically-linked weather reports for cities worldwide provided by the National Weather Service.
Friday 12 September 1997
Featured Guest debuts on main page (15:25 EDT)
As a demonstration of one method to rotate content and control the results, without using server-side add-ins, this site now shows a randomly-selected featured guest on the main page. Though the rotated content right now includes only a few personal photographs, using ADO instead of the server-side Ad Rotator component offers tremendous flexibility and power.
Tuesday 23 September 1997
Weather conditions on welcome page (16:30 EDT)
The main page now displays current local conditions from the National Weather Service METAR data site.
World weather on display (17:05 EDT)
The site's international city list now displays each city's current local temperature.
Wednesday 24 September 1997
Weather histories available for 67 cities (11:15 EDT)
A side effect of fetching a bunch of data from the National Weather Service METAR data site is that this site maintains a small amount of historical weather data for the cities listed. You can select a city from the list and see its past 25 hours' temperatures, dewpoints, and sky conditions.
Site gets new logic, features (16:30 EDT)
Lots of new features have appeared at this site:
- The site login logic has changed. Now, the site keeps track of your city information on the server side, instead of in cookies. Only the User ID is stored in a cookie. This will eventually allow users to log in from any web browser anywhere.
- The international city list, weather history, and greeting page now all take advantage of improved server-side weather gathering and reporting tools.
- Watch for new photographs soon.
Keep watching this site for exciting new developments.
Friday 26 September 1997
Important: Legal statement revised (14:00 EDT)
This site's legal statement changed on 26 September 1997. We clarified our positions on copyright and privacy issues, and changed other parts to reflect the site's new architecture.
Site Completely Overhauled (20:00 EDT)
Those of you who have visited before will notice a number of huge improvements in the site's presentation:
- All of the pages have a consistent look and feel
- We have redesigned most of the pages to bring you more useful information
- The site's automatic polling of the National Weather Service METAR data site is more stable and consistent, meaning you get more complete and timely updates
- We have tested every page with Netscape Navigator 3.0 (as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02) and, despite huge temptations to continue, we have stopped bashing Netscape at every turn
- Introductory pages and others have clearer instructions and descriptions to make this site easier to use.
We hope you continue to enjoy the site. As always, we encourage you to comment via email.
Monday 29 September 1997
Q2 Gets T1 (08:00 EDT)
Q2 II, Inc., your web designer's employer and the host of this web site, just upgraded from a 56kbs analog network line to a 512kbs fractional T1 line. If you have the opportunity to view this site on a host computer with equal or better web access, you will no doubt notice the amazing speed improvement.
Tue 30 September 1997
Explanations appear (17:30 EDT)
Since this is a demonstration site, we thought we should actually explain to visitors what we're demonstrating. Now, pages that have explanations have hyperlinks to the page on the disclaimer line.