Upgrade of the Bureau’s web site

Figures from Hitwise for the week ending the 26th of June 2004 show that the Bureau's web site continues to be popular with the people of Australia. Across all sites visited (includes international sites), the Bureau's web site is the 28th most popular.

Based on the number of visits to just Australian web sites, measured on a weekly basis, the Bureau's web site is:

• the 15th most popular across all categories,
• the most popular weather site,
• the most popular government site, and
• the most popular education site.

Despite the continuing popularity of the Bureau’s web site , efforts continue to improve the site by making it easier to navigate and the content more accessible.

On the new look web site:

• the navigation bar is redesigned
  • to simplify presentation and
  • to include the new Australian Government Branding
• each State and Territory’s pages are redesigned
  • making forecast and observation data easier to find and access
  • with relevant information listed on the right hand side
  • to be a more complete collection of relevant information
  • to reduce the time it takes to download a web page
  • to improve access to information for people with disabilities
• a new Global Weather and Warnings page has been introduced
• a new link on the navigation bar pointing to the Numerical Predictions web pages has been introduced

Up to 72 hours of observational data are now available for most of the Bureau’s 519 Automatic Weather Stations around the nation, in addition to numerous other sites in the Bureau’s Co-operative Observer network, in an easy to read, tabular format.

The new Agricultural Bulletins will be included in the new pages under the "Weather Observations" header displayed in similarly formatted tables, which have been developed to be accessible to as wide a cross section of the World Wide Web community as possible.

These updates to the web site were applied on the 30th of June 2004.