Update Notes
7/20/13

The Web site for the Western Region of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and some of associated NWS (National Weather Service) web pages were subject to new restriction effective in July 2013.  The result is that display in frames pages was disallowed.  This cause about 30 links on our SCPA site to malfunction.  Most of the URLs that changed were for sites starting with http://wrh.noaa.gov.

New links were found, and the existing links were retined, but configured to open on a new window, or a target.  Some reporting stations offered several links.  Links opening in a new window were labeled "3".  Since the extra options in the links frame (left frame) required more space, the frame withd was increased to 168 pixels.

Assistance was provided by Ryan, one of the webmasters at the Western Region Headquarters of NOAA

Also removed old Geo Map Link because the old source of Geo Maps is no longer active.
http://svinetfc4.fs.fed.us/clearinghouse/rastergateway/scp/page_34119.html


email chain

From: Tom Truax [mailto:tom@truax.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2013 11:13 PM
To: 'W-Lox Webmaster - NOAA Service Account'
Subject: RE: frame display disallowed? / SCPA.info links updated

Ryan,

Thank you for your assistance. I have updated the links that had alternate options as you suggested, and the ones that didn’t I set to open unframed in a new named target.

Tom Truax, SCPA web volunteer. http://scpa.info/weather
805 680-7727 cell tom@truax.com

From: W-Lox Webmaster - NOAA Service Account [mailto:w-lox.webmaster@noaa.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 9:42 AM
To: Tom Truax
Cc: W-Wrh Webmaster - NOAA Service Account
Subject: Re: frame display disallowed?

Hi Tom.

I apologize for this change. It was for security reasons, but I think there is a solution for you.

The new changes only apply to pages that start with www.wrh.noaa.gov ...not other noaa.gov pages. I think most, if not all, of your links have alternative links outside of the wrh.noaa.gov pages. Here are some examples:

Discussion: http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=LOX&issuedby=LOX&product=AFD&format=txt&version=1&glossary=1

Zone Forecasts: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=CAZ039
-or- http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=CAZ039&TextType=1
(just replace the CAZ039 with CAZXXX where the XXX is the three numbers you have after parse= in your current links

Airport Observations: http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KLAX.html
(just replace the "KLAX.html" with KXXX.html where XXX is the airport identifier code (like OXR or SBA or CMA)

Other Observations: http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/meso_base.cgi?unit=0&timetype=LOCAL&stn=PU
(just replace the "PU" with XXX where XXX is the observation identifier code (like C7664 or MTCC1)

There isn't a good replacement for the observations map, but there is this: http://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/tafs/displaymetarstafs
or this: http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/mesomap.cgi?state=CA&rawsflag=1

I hope this helps and is satisfactory. I know how this can be a hassle, but appreciate your patience.
If you have any questions with what I wrote, please let me know. If you would like me to call you over this, just let me know.

Have a wonderful day,
-Ryan


On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Tom Truax <tom@truax.com> wrote:
Near NWS and or NOAA Webmaster,

I maintain the weather page for our local sport flying organizations, the SCPA (South Coast Paragliding Association), and the SBSA (South Coast Soaring Association). The link to our weather page is http://scpa.info/weather. Our local pilots have relied on the weather page for over a dozen years. Our weather page is a collection of links to numerous local indicators, many of which are resources provided by the NWS and NOAA.

The NWS and NOAA recently made changes that disabled our ability to link to information on the NWS site.
Our revision history is logged at http://scpa.info/weather/revision  The links have been updated many times over the past 12 years.

Our SCPA weather page is a collection of links to numerous local indicators, many of which are resources provided by the NWS and NOAA. The links open in the main frame of a html frameset. The links are in a collapsible menu in the left frame. This past week, all of our NWS links and some of our NOAA links lost the ability to open in a frameset frame (they will open as a full page in a new page or a new tab).

Without the ability to open links in a frame set frame, our local pilots are severely impacted. Their inability to quickly review relevant weather negatively impacts the quality of their decisions in a hazardous sport where monitoring local meteorology is vitally important.

Is there some way to link directly to the core data? We will tolerate banners if necessary, but we already provide a link to the NWS home page, so it would be beneficial to minimize the clutter and link directly to the data. The on-screen message returned when trying to open the pages in a frame indicates the publisher is disallowing display in a frameset because it may compromise data we may enter. Since we only want the data, and don’t need to enter personal information, I can’t see where the security issue is.

We aren’t talking about a lot of links (about 30).

Unfortunately, I am not a professional programmer or webmaster. I am one of several volunteers who help provide our local pilots with tools to enhance their awareness. Our website is fairly simple. No scripting or advertising.

Please contact me by phone or email and let me know if you have any suggestions on how we can address the issue above.

Sincerely,
Tom Truax 805 680-7727 cell tom@truax.com
webmaster for http://scpa.info/weather