[aprssig] New find.cgi mockup

[Scott Miller]

I did a little Javascript function that implemented a launch countdown timer
for Vandenberg's launch schedule site - all the available code I found
assumed the user's clock to be accurate and in the same time zone, so that
didn't help.  The code I came up with had a server-side part that would tell
the client-side code what the current time at the server was, so it could
calculate the difference between the client and server clocks.  Worked
pretty well, with the countdown being within a few seconds, depending on how
long the page took to load.  Unfortunately not many launches had concrete,
published t-zero times to work with, and after 9-11 it's even worse.  Not
sure what I did with that code snippet...

Scott
N1VG

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Dimse" <k4hg at tapr.org>
To: "Robert Bruninga" <bruninga at usna.edu>
Cc: <aprssig at lists.tapr.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: [aprssig] New find.cgi mockup


On 11/24/04 at 4:18 PM Robert Bruninga <bruninga at usna.edu> sent:

>I love the new FINDU page!
>
>But, I'd still like to see the UTC time stamp on the page in the
>line that says:  "Report received 8 hours, 37 minutes ago".
>Without a time stamp anywhere on the page, the "age" noted on the
>page is of no value except the instant it was refreshed.
>
>I'd suggest something like:
> "At 1430z on 24 Nov 2004, last report received 8 hrs 37m ago"...
>
>Then the image could stand-alone with meaning and one would
>have confidence that the auto-refresh was in fact working...

Bob, as I have argued with you in the past, this is simply not useful.

First, in order to have any validity, the user's computer must be
synchronized
to an NTS time server. Many are now, so maybe this is not such a big deal.

Even if the clocks are in sync, the user must then see what his current
system
time is, and compare it mentally to the timestamp on the page.

Given that the alternative is simply to hit the manual refresh button, and
be
assured the data is up to date, your method is a lot of extra work. When you
add
in the fact that any new data between the last auto refresh and the time the
user is looking will now be displayed, and no additional mental math is
required
for the user to figure out the time interval since the user last
transmitted,
the manual refresh is a far superior means of achieving the same ends...

Steve K4HG

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