Stylish weather for all, from the BBC - one bookmark, job done

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The BBC is on a roll at the moment. After the earlier responsive eLearning site, there's now a whole new responsive take on the BBC's famous weather service, complete with scrolling, swipeable day and hour timelines. See below for more.

I'm a huge fan of delivering services simply via a web browser where possible, with no need for installing applications. Yes, this goes against the prevailing 'there's an app for that' trend, but 'there's a bookmark for that' works almost as well and is often simpler and cheaper.

In this case, stick m.bbc.co.uk/weather in your bookmarks and you're done. The BBC does say on its blog that this is a trial:

This week we launched a new responsive site for BBC Weather. As our MVP (minimum viable product) release, this replaces the old feature phone Weather site with an optimised experience for feature phone and smartphone users.

It's a work-in-progress, and the first step in our plans to move to a fully responsive web solution on mobile, tablet and desktop. In true Agile, we're expecting to roll out more features and content over the coming months. Naturally we're also listening to our users as we prototype and tweak new features.

From previous user feedback, we can see the success of the iOS and Android app has been its simplicity and ease of use. Therefore, it's no surprise that we followed these design patterns for the responsive version of the site. Smartphone users will immediately notice the introduction of horizontally-scrolling day tabs and hourly information, like the app.

However, one key difference for web site development is the depth and richness of content available. Our static desktop website covers everything from simple location forecasts to detailed tide and coastal data, video, picture galleries, maps and infographics. We will need to reflect this in future iterations of the responsive site. For this reason, the first iteration of the responsive site is opt-in at m.bbc.co.uk/weather. We won't be automatically redirecting mobile users until we have built a satisfactory base of content and features on that platform.

It all looks good to me, here's the new responsive weather site modelled on both Windows Phone and Symbian (this being cross posted on both AAS and AAWP):

Screenshot, BBC responsive weatherScreenshot, BBC responsive weather

In Windows Phone's Internet Explorer browser, showing the two main swipeable carousels and other essential weather stats; (right) further down the page, there are basic units and language toggles. Early days, of course, for the system.

Screenshot, BBC responsive weatherScreenshot, BBC responsive weather

And the same works fine on the older Symbian Web browser, also with the 'cannot get rid of it' bottom bar (what is it with Nokia and hating full-screen mode?); (right) note also the feedback request button - get your comments in now to help shape the evolving site....

In the meantime, head for m.bbc.co.uk/weather and bookmark/favourite it, this is a great resource that's sure to get better in time. 

Source / Credit: BBC