You will no longer see the spinner image when the home page is refreshed. Previously iOS (iPhones/iPads) would sometimes display a blank page unless a slight delay was created while refreshing a page from device memory. The image let visitors know something was happening — no need to refresh manually which could make it worse. It appears that bug is gone now (knock on wood). So I have removed the image.
On the maps page, you’ll notice a couple changes. First, I had to replace the “Regional Radar” with a different image because the previous one hadn’t been updated in awhile. I had to completely remove the Surface Maps image for the same reason; however, there isn’t a freely available alternative available at the moment. If anyone would really like to see a replacement for a frontal map, let me know. Otherwise, I will leave everything as is. (Update 5/10/19: Both maps have been returned to service after being frozen for 3 days. We’ll keep an eye on them.)
The loop images on the maps page will now play continuously. I had to eliminate the play/pause button because on certain devices it was preventing the image from loading. It also seemed to slow down the loading process and sometimes interfere with the “user experience”.
I’ve addressed an issue where previously on iPhones the display would zoom when you selected an “Enhanced Radar” option. It should no longer do that (in portrait orientation at least).
I also fixed a bug affecting rain measurements on the home page that would only happen under rare circumstances. The malfunction also created incorrect totals for “Yesterday’s Rainfall” in the Almanac section, but only when metric units were selected in the page settings.
Finally, I’ve performed some back end improvements. The site now fully supports the HTTP/2 protocol resulting in better performance.