The font size is too small for emergencies on mobile devices. You need to consider that users might be in a panic, may not have both hands free to zoom in, and their vision could be impaired by smoke or other factors.
It is astonishing how one's motor skills degrade when the adrenaline is flowing. I once tried to dial 911 on an iPhone in such circumstances. My hands were shaking so badly I kept dialing 922, 811, 914, and so on. Terrible in the moment but a very good lesson for preparedness. I really appreciate the "dial Emergency" methods on modern phone software that just need a button held down.
My only complaint with hold-to-dial emergency dialing is phones with damaged or glitchy buttons (ghost presses) that trigger it accidentally. There's probably a setting to disable it, though I think its manufacturer-dependent.
Others have mentioned this but looks like fires from close to ~20 years ago are still showing up as "active emergencies"[0]. Shows the Nash Ranch fire as an active emergency but it was declared in 2008.
It would be good for the specific state/province/city pages to include the same info from the ancestor pages so you only have to link to and load one page for your area.
I disagree with your disagreement, for example HN is readable but the linked site feels too small for my eyes on a 21.5" 1080p monitor. It also doesn't respect browser preferences, unless you enforce a minimum font size (which can break display elements on other sites):
There's no reason why you couldn't have smaller font while still respecting browser scaling. However, they might also want to just leave it at 1 rem and let the folks that prefer higher information density to customize their own browser settings, since those are what most well developed sites should respect and it might be more accessible by default on most devices (for my eyes, at the very least).
As for targeting specific screen sizes for non-standard font scaling, media queries also would help!
In regards to missing information dense pages, try changing your browser font settings, it might actually be quite pleasant for you to see many sites respecting that preference!
I agree that too many sites now will narrow the text area and pad too much. The issue here is a fixed pixel size that will look quite different depending on the specific monitor setup you have.
And honestly if this type of thing bothers you as much as it does me, unfortunately it means adding a bunch of stylus sheets everywhere...
I think the default target is expecting a smaller screen mobile device, hence the 13px default. This is a good idea, and any other screen sizes that see smaller text can still zoom in using default browser behaviors.
Normally I would say this doesn't matter much, but I wonder if a shorter domain name (or just one without a dash in it) might be in order here. I don't think I would want to be typing or remebering "safe-now.live" in an emergency
In Texas we lose people every year because they think they can make it across what looks like a small, shallow creek and are swept away by water that is really much deeper. You might think, “Well, those are stupid Texans,” but we even have EMS personnel die that way. A couple years ago we lost a deputy sheriff who was patrolling and trying to monitor water levels. Her car got swept away and then pinned downstream and she drowned. “Turn around, don’t drown,” is a mantra here.
When you drill down to active emergencies for a local area there's a ton of stuff there but it's all old. Why display it if the purpose of the site is current emergency info?
I think they are referring to the occurrence rate of false positives, not that of false negatives. E.g. the page for California lists back through to the Bond Fire, which was contained in 2020. The problem may stem from that the FEMA page lists the incident as a single day https://www.fema.gov/disaster/5385 so this tool doesn't set and end date like it would for https://www.fema.gov/disaster/5382
A similar kind of noise note could probably be made of the "Recent Earthquakes" section. E.g. if you select Indianapolis, IN it includes all the way down to a M2.6 which occurred in NW Tennessee 30 days ago.
Looks nice & useful. However, I'd make two versions: The one you have, and additionally a version with Javascript that is a Progressive Web App (PWA). I'm pretty sure some AI could convert the normal page into a PWA for you.
The PWA has the advantage that it will also load when the internet is down and there is no need to save the page manually.
The complete web page and all resources are saved locally by the service worker. "Clear site data"/clear cookies will delete it. However, clearing the normal browser cache won't. It's overall a little more persistent than the cache for static resources. However, it needs to be installed as an app to really work offline without initial loading. Chrome will prompt you for that on Android, Linux, and Windows. Safari can also do that but makes you jump through hoops.
The font size is too small for emergencies on mobile devices. You need to consider that users might be in a panic, may not have both hands free to zoom in, and their vision could be impaired by smoke or other factors.
It is astonishing how one's motor skills degrade when the adrenaline is flowing. I once tried to dial 911 on an iPhone in such circumstances. My hands were shaking so badly I kept dialing 922, 811, 914, and so on. Terrible in the moment but a very good lesson for preparedness. I really appreciate the "dial Emergency" methods on modern phone software that just need a button held down.
My only complaint with hold-to-dial emergency dialing is phones with damaged or glitchy buttons (ghost presses) that trigger it accidentally. There's probably a setting to disable it, though I think its manufacturer-dependent.
Imagine trying to navigate Hacker News in an emergency. LOL!
Others have mentioned this but looks like fires from close to ~20 years ago are still showing up as "active emergencies"[0]. Shows the Nash Ranch fire as an active emergency but it was declared in 2008.
[0]: https://safe-now.live/c/us/co/colorado-springs/
AI didn't know we are not interested in 20 year old fires.
It would be good for the specific state/province/city pages to include the same info from the ancestor pages so you only have to link to and load one page for your area.
The UK emergency phone number is 999, not 112.
Ugh. Don't make a website like this without verifying the information is correct please!
I'm seeing fires from 1999.
https://safe-now.live/c/us/al/
Well technically the agent did “build a website of the latest emergencies in every county”… it just so happens Alabama rarely has forest fires.
Yeah, it goes back to 2021 for California for a list of 15 fires or so - and we have 120 current ones, so probably not a good explanation.
The about page [0] links to a github repository [1], but it seems to not be uploaded or hidden.
[0]: https://safe-now.live/about
[1]: https://github.com/venkatag/SafeNow
I would suggest increasing font-size, looks too small
I disagree. When I saw the page, I thought, "Finally an information dense page again! It's been so long since they've been common and I miss them."
I disagree with your disagreement, for example HN is readable but the linked site feels too small for my eyes on a 21.5" 1080p monitor. It also doesn't respect browser preferences, unless you enforce a minimum font size (which can break display elements on other sites):
If the dev wanted a similar effect by default but be more accommodating, they could do: There's no reason why you couldn't have smaller font while still respecting browser scaling. However, they might also want to just leave it at 1 rem and let the folks that prefer higher information density to customize their own browser settings, since those are what most well developed sites should respect and it might be more accessible by default on most devices (for my eyes, at the very least).As for targeting specific screen sizes for non-standard font scaling, media queries also would help!
In regards to missing information dense pages, try changing your browser font settings, it might actually be quite pleasant for you to see many sites respecting that preference!
I agree that too many sites now will narrow the text area and pad too much. The issue here is a fixed pixel size that will look quite different depending on the specific monitor setup you have.
And honestly if this type of thing bothers you as much as it does me, unfortunately it means adding a bunch of stylus sheets everywhere...
I think the default target is expecting a smaller screen mobile device, hence the 13px default. This is a good idea, and any other screen sizes that see smaller text can still zoom in using default browser behaviors.
Agree, even just converting to use em instead of px is more usable on differing screen size/dpi
Yup. Even on mobile the text is too small for me. In particular, the line-height could be larger so links can be tapped more easily.
Nice though, I like it.
Normally I would say this doesn't matter much, but I wonder if a shorter domain name (or just one without a dash in it) might be in order here. I don't think I would want to be typing or remebering "safe-now.live" in an emergency
I think people would be more interested in the heavy emergencies, not just the ultra light ones
It must be able to cache it's all content in browser.
I guess to do it it properly you need to make it PWA.
You can also just use proper HTTP cache headers. ETag and a very long Expires header.
Nice touch to have it bilingual in Canada.
Maybe add Spanish?
Local news needs timestamps… I see stale last-week weather news. Had to click and see date from last week in the article.
>Flood: Higher ground - Turn around, don't drown
It's hard to take a 14 year old serious ...
In Texas we lose people every year because they think they can make it across what looks like a small, shallow creek and are swept away by water that is really much deeper. You might think, “Well, those are stupid Texans,” but we even have EMS personnel die that way. A couple years ago we lost a deputy sheriff who was patrolling and trying to monitor water levels. Her car got swept away and then pinned downstream and she drowned. “Turn around, don’t drown,” is a mantra here.
When you drill down to active emergencies for a local area there's a ton of stuff there but it's all old. Why display it if the purpose of the site is current emergency info?
Are there any fema declared disasters you believe are omitted?
I think they are referring to the occurrence rate of false positives, not that of false negatives. E.g. the page for California lists back through to the Bond Fire, which was contained in 2020. The problem may stem from that the FEMA page lists the incident as a single day https://www.fema.gov/disaster/5385 so this tool doesn't set and end date like it would for https://www.fema.gov/disaster/5382
A similar kind of noise note could probably be made of the "Recent Earthquakes" section. E.g. if you select Indianapolis, IN it includes all the way down to a M2.6 which occurred in NW Tennessee 30 days ago.
great stuff!!
wish there was sth lk this this side of the pond
... for North America.
> for North America
Correct? Straight from the text: "a text-first emergency info site for USA and Canada"
Looks nice & useful. However, I'd make two versions: The one you have, and additionally a version with Javascript that is a Progressive Web App (PWA). I'm pretty sure some AI could convert the normal page into a PWA for you.
The PWA has the advantage that it will also load when the internet is down and there is no need to save the page manually.
How can it load when the internet is down?!? Doesn’t the PWA source have to be fetched? And if it’s cached, then so can be the static resources.
The complete web page and all resources are saved locally by the service worker. "Clear site data"/clear cookies will delete it. However, clearing the normal browser cache won't. It's overall a little more persistent than the cache for static resources. However, it needs to be installed as an app to really work offline without initial loading. Chrome will prompt you for that on Android, Linux, and Windows. Safari can also do that but makes you jump through hoops.