quick link for display of only amateur radio stations

[Sean Campbell]

Hi,

My aprs friends and I often use aprs.fi in conjunction with our amateur radio activities.  In our area, the map is quite congested with CWOP stations in particular.

We are aware of (and use) the filtering capabilities to show all HAM stations (including combination ham wx/digi stations AND ham radio "objects")....basically, we are only interested in data from aprsis, and not CWOP and other citizens projects.

While the filtering does work, not only does it require you to log in, but it also does not 'remember' the last view.  When re-visiting aprs.fi, it is necessary to log in (if not already), AND click the filter icon and select the saved filter.

We were wondering if it would be possible to have a quick link...for instance:   aprs.fi/hamonly        that would show the map with only the data we are interested in.

Is this something you would be willing to do?  Or perhaps we have overlooked a more simple solution?

We very much appreciate your service, and find it most useful.  Thanks for your consideration.

-samwathegreat

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Sean Campbell <samwat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> While the filtering does work, not only does it require you to log in, but
> it also does not 'remember' the last view. When re-visiting aprs.fi, it is
> necessary to log in (if not already), AND click the filter icon and select
> the saved filter.

It does require you to log in, since the filter lists are attached to
your user account, so that they can be shared between multiple devices
/ computers. I'm not willing to change that, since it's a handy
feature as such, and the login is remembered for a very long time on
the same browser (the cookie is long-living).

However, it is not necessary to select the saved filter every time.
After selecting a saved filter list you can save the current view as
the default view in Preferences, and that'll save the currently
selected filter list as the default.

I have quite a few reports of the saved default view getting lost at
some point, which is apparently a bug, but I need some help in
debugging this, since I'm not seeing it here. Requests for technical
debugging help (looking at the browser cookie jar before/after loosing
the settings) have not produced responses, so I guess it's not a very
common problem.

> We were wondering if it would be possible to have a quick link...for
> instance: aprs.fi/hamonly that would show the map with only the
> data we are interested in.

aprs.fi/plainword is reserved for looking up stations (try
aprs.fi/efhk or aprs.fi/aurora), and any short links placed there
would eventually collide with station names.

If I now set up a "ham only" short link, what other different links
would be required next? I wouldn't like to go that way.

- Hessu

[Sean Campbell]

Thanks Hessu,

Just as I had asked, you showed a simpler way.  We were not aware that you could save the default view from preferences.  We had tried (unsuccessfully) to save the current filter to "Default", but then 2 'defaults' appeared in the list.

I have saved the new default view using preferences, and now I do not have to click the filter button.

Thanks again,

samwathegreat

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 7:34 AM, Sean Campbell <samwat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just as I had asked, you showed a simpler way. We were not aware that you
> could save the default view from preferences. We had tried (unsuccessfully)
> to save the current filter to "Default", but then 2 'defaults' appeared in
> the list.

The "Default" filter is, like you've found, a site-wide hard-coded
default that you cannot change permanently - not your own customisable
"default which will load at first". You can change its contents, but
then you'll have to save it to a different entry. It's quite
confusing, but I'm not sure how to make it better.

If the Default there could be edited and saved, I'm afraid quite a few
people would uncheck the only entry, the map would clear, and then
they'd come here saying "my map is empty". So, I'd prefer to make it
slightly hard to change the default to something that doesn't show
anything.

- Hessu