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Making an iOS version of the renowned weather app Weawow

09/11/2023

2.87k

Thuong Truong

Weawow is a free weather app that stands out from the crowd by offering an ad-free experience and showcasing beautiful weather-related photos contributed by photographers from around the world.

SupremeTech is honored to develop the iOS version of Weawow after it had already established a stable presence on Android and the web.

An Exceptional Weather App with Over 6,000,000 Downloads

Weawow, while relatively new in recent years, is steadily asserting its success in the ‘weather app race’ with over 6 million organic downloads for Android version only and a favorable rating of 4.8+/5 stars with over 591K reviews on Google play. Weawow is currently available in 176 countries around the world. We believe this free weather app will continue to grow and quickly become one of the most popular weather apps.

As an iOS development partner, SupremeTech is thrilled to contribute to the expansion and continuous growth of Weawow.

The free weather App That Makes Users Say ‘Wow’

What sets Weawow apart is its ability to evoke a “Wow” reaction from users with its vivid weather predictions presented through imagery rather than mundane figures or text.

In addition to the photos provided by professional photographers, users can also capture their own captivating weather snapshots and share them on the Weawow platform. These images can then be seamlessly integrated into the app, visible to weather enthusiasts worldwide.

Weawow offers customization options, allowing users to choose how weather data is displayed, such as rainfall amounts, wind speeds, pressure, UV index, and more.

This app is available in over 50 languages, making it accessible to a global audience.

SupremeTech’s Unique Challenge

In contrast to other clients, SupremeTech developed the iOS version of Weawow after it had already established a stable presence on Android and the web. Since the UI/UX design of the Android version, as well as the core features, is optimized perfectly, it’s a unique challenge for the iOS team to adapt and keep up with the high quality. SupremeTech had to adapt the app to align with the existing platforms, all while meeting high UI/UX standards set by the earlier versions.

SupremeTech undertook the development of the app with a team of high-skilled iOS developers. We are truly inspired by the perfectionism of the Weawow team. With the great support from our client, we worked diligently and with great enthusiasm. In order to meet the requirement from the Weawow team, we quickly researched and identified the most efficient methods for implementation based on the existing version available on Android.

iOS

This challenge demanded a high level of ownership from SupremeTech, as we actively researched and resolved issues throughout the development process. Despite these obstacles, SupremeTech successfully completed the project within a year, utilizing Swift as the programming language. The results garnered positive feedback from Weawow.

Mr. Shinohara, President of Weawow Inc., expressed satisfaction with SupremeTech’s work:

“Due to the popularity of our application on Android devices, we requested the initial development of an iOS application. We only provided them with the Android app source files, API documentation, and simple notes on implementation, but they created something almost identical to the Android app. We didn’t have to spend a lot of time communicating with them to develop the app, and the iOS app source code they produced was very easy to understand, so when we made changes or corrections, we could easily understand the scope of the impact, making the subsequent management of the app much more effortless.”

Main Features of this weather app

A list of photos taken by photographers around the world

The photos reflect the weather at the user’s current location and show whether it is sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy, so it is better to wear an umbrella or sunglasses when going out. You can decide if you need it.
We designed it so that when you open the app, you’ll encounter beautiful photos instead of boring text-based predictions.
Also, if you took your own photos, you can post them through the website and we’ve integrated them into the app for display by weather watchers around the world. (The app is available in over 50 languages.)

Weather map and radar display

– Weather providers: NOAA, RainViewer, MET Norway, MSC
– Globe (14-day forecast): You can check wind animation and various weather layers on the 3D globe.

– Google Maps (Radar and 1-day forecast): You can check the actual rainfall radar on Google Maps.

Weather data

– Changeable weather providers: NWS (NOAA), DWD, MET Norway, Dark Sky, AerisWeather, Weatherbit, World Weather Online, Open Weather map, (AccuWeather, Foreca) – No ads at all despite being a free
app Implementation not shown.
-Supported languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and 50 other languages.

If your business already owns an app in one version and wishes to expand to either Android or iOS platforms, don’t hesitate to contact SupremeTech. With our experience, SupremeTech is committed to ensuring your satisfaction. Get in touch with us today.

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    Sparking the Fire, Spreading the Passion

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        Level Up Your Code: Transitioning to Validated Environment Variables

        Validated Environment variables play a critical role in software projects of all sizes. As projects grow, so does the number of environment variables—API keys, custom configurations, feature flags, and more. Managing these variables effectively becomes increasingly complex. If mismanaged, they can lead to severe bugs, server crashes, and even security vulnerabilities.  While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, having some structure in how we manage environment variables can really help reduce mistakes and confusion down the road. In this article, I’ll share how I’ve been handling them in my own projects and what’s worked well for me so far. My Personal Story When I first started programming, environment variables were a constant source of headaches. I often ran into problems like: Misspelled variable names.Failure to retrieve variable values, even though I was sure they were set.Forgetting to define variables entirely, leading to runtime errors. These issues were tricky to detect. Typically, I wouldn’t notice anything was wrong until the application misbehaved or crashed. Debugging these errors was tedious—tracing back through the code to find that the root cause was a missing or misconfigured environment variable. For a long time, I struggled with managing environment variables. Eventually, I discovered a more effective approach: validating all required variables before running the application. This process has saved me countless hours of debugging and has become a core part of my workflow. Today, I want to share this approach with you. A Common Trap in Real Projects Beyond personal hiccups, I’ve also seen issues arise in real-world projects due to manual environment handling. One particular pitfall involves relying on if/else conditions to set or interpret environment variables like NODE_ENV. For example: if (process.env.NODE_ENV === "production") { // do something } else { // assume development } This type of conditional logic can seem harmless during development, but it often leads to incomplete coverage during testing. Developers typically test in development mode and may forget or assume things will "just work" in production. As a result, issues are only discovered after the application is deployed — when it's too late. In one of our team’s past projects, this exact scenario caused a production bug that slipped through all local tests. The root cause? A missing environment variable that was only required in production, and the conditional logic silently skipped it in development. This highlights the importance of failing fast and loudly—ideally before the application even starts. And that’s exactly what environment variable validation helps with. The Solution: Validating Environment Variables The secret to managing environment variables efficiently lies in validation. Instead of assuming all necessary variables are correctly set, validate them at the application’s startup. This prevents the application from running in an incomplete or misconfigured state, minimizing runtime errors and improving overall reliability. Benefits of Validating Environment Variables Error Prevention: Catch missing or misconfigured variables early.Improved Debugging: Clear error messages make it easier to trace issues.Security: Ensures sensitive variables like API keys are set correctly.Consistency: Establishes a standard for how environment variables are managed across your team. Implementation Here’s a simple and structured way to validate environment variables in a TypeScript project. Step 1: Define an Interface Define the expected environment variables using a TypeScript interface to enforce type safety. export interface Config { NODE_ENV: "development" | "production" | "test"; SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET: string; SLACK_BOT_TOKEN: string; SLACK_APP_TOKEN: string; PORT: number; } Step 2: Create a Config Loader Write a function to load and validate environment variables. This loader ensures that each variable is present and meets the expected type or format. Step 3: Export the Configuration Use the config loader to create a centralized configuration object that can be imported throughout your project. import { loadConfig } from "./loader"; export const config = loadConfig(); Conclusion Transitioning to validated environment variables is a straightforward yet powerful step toward building more reliable and secure applications. By validating variables during startup, you can catch misconfigurations early, save hours of debugging, and ensure your application is always running with the correct settings.

        09/07/2025

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        Bao Dang D. Q.

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        09/07/2025

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          Build Smarter: Best Practices for Creating Optimized Dockerfile

          If you’ve been using Docker in your projects, you probably know how powerful it is for shipping consistent environments across teams and systems. It's time to learn how to optimize dockerfile. But here’s the thing: a poorly written Dockerfile can quickly become a hidden performance bottleneck. Making your images unnecessarily large, your build time painfully slow, or even causing unexpected behavior in production. I’ve seen this firsthand—from early projects where we just “made it work” with whatever Dockerfile we had, to larger systems where the cost of a bad image multiplied across services. My name is Bao. After working on several real-world projects and going through lots of trial and error. I’ve gathered a handful of practical best practices to optimize Dockerfile that I’d love to share with you. Whether you’re refining a production-grade image or just curious about what you might be missing. Let me walk you through how I approach Docker optimization. Hopefully it’ll save you time, headaches, and a few docker build rage moments 😅. Identifying Inefficiencies in Dockerfile: A Case Study Below is the Dockerfile we’ll analyze: Key Observations: 1. Base Image: The Dockerfile uses ubuntu:latest, which is a general-purpose image. While versatile, it is significantly larger compared to minimal images like ubuntu:slim or Node.js-specific images like node:20-slim, node:20-alpine. 2. Redundant Package Installation: Tools like vim, wget, and git are installed but may not be necessary for building or running the application. 3. Global npm Packages: Pages like nodemon, ESLint, and prettier are installed globally. These are typically used for development and are not required in a production image. 4. Caching Issues: COPY . . is placed before npm install, invalidating the cache whenever any application file changes, even if the dependencies remain the same. 5. Shell Customization: Setting up a custom shell prompt (PS1) is irrelevant for production environments, adding unnecessary steps. 6. Development Tool in Production: The CMD uses nodemon, which is a development tool, to run the application Optimized your Docker Image Here’s how we can optimize the Dockerfile step by step. Showing the before and after for each section with the result to clearly distinguish the improvements. 1. Change the Base Image Before: FROM ubuntu:latest RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl && curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | bash - && \ apt-get install -y nodejs Use ubuntu:latest, a general-purpose image that is large and includes many unnecessary tools. After: FROM node:20-alpine Switches to node:20-alpine, a lightweight image specifically tailored for Node.js applications. Result: With the first change being applied, the image size is drastically reduced by about ~200MB.  2. Simplify Installed Packages Before: RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \ curl \ wget \ git \ vim \ python3 \ make \ g++ && \ curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | bash - && \ apt-get install -y nodejs Installs multiple tools (curl, wget, vim, git) and Node.js manually, increasing the image size and complexity. After: RUN apk add --no-cache python3 make g++ Uses apk (Alpine’s package manager) to install only essential build tools (python3, make, g++). Result: The image should be cleaner and smaller after removing the unnecessary tools, packages. (~250MB vs ~400MB with the older version) 3. Leverage Dependency Caching Before: COPY . . RUN npm install Copies all files before installing dependencies, causing cache invalidation whenever any file changes, even if dependencies remain unchanged. After: COPY package*.json ./ RUN npm install --only=production COPY . . Copies only package.json and package-lock.json first, ensuring that dependency installation is only re-run when these files change.Installs only production dependencies (--only=production) to exclude devDependencies. Result: Faster rebuilds and a smaller image by excluding unnecessary files and dependencies. 4. Remove Global npm Installations Before: RUN npm install -g nodemon eslint pm2 typescript prettier Installs global npm packages (nodemon, eslint, pm2, ect.) that are not needed in production, increasing image size. After: Remove Entirely: Global tools are omitted because they are unnecessary in production. Result: Reduced image size and eliminated unnecessary layers. 5. Use a Production-Ready CMD Before: CMD ["nodemon", "/app/bin/www"] Uses nodemon, which is meant for development, not production. Result: A streamlined and efficient startup command. 6. Remove Unnecessary Shell Customization Before: ENV PS1A="💻\[\e[33m\]\u\[\e[m\]@ubuntu-node\[\e[36m\][\[\e[m\]\[\e[36m\]\w\[\e[m\]\[\e[36m\]]\[\e[m\]: " RUN echo 'PS1=$PS1A' >> ~/.bashrc Sets and applies a custom shell prompt that has no practical use in production After: Remove Entirely: Shell customization is unnecessary and is removed. Result: Cleaner image with no redundant configurations or layers. Final Optimized Dockerfile FROM node:20-alpine WORKDIR /app RUN apk add --no-cache python3 make g++ COPY package*.json ./ RUN npm install --only=production COPY . . EXPOSE 3000 CMD ["node", "/app/bin/www"] 7. Leverage Multi-Stage Builds to Separate Build and Runtime In many Node.js projects, you might need tools like TypeScript or linters during the build phase—but they’re unnecessary in the final production image. That’s where multi-stage builds come in handy. Before: Everything—from installation to build to running—happens in a single image, meaning all build-time tools get carried into production. After: You separate the "build" and "run" stages, keeping only what’s strictly needed at runtime. Result: Smaller, cleaner production imageBuild-time dependencies are excludedFaster and safer deployments Final Optimized Dockerfile # Stage 1 - Builder FROM node:20-alpine AS builder WORKDIR /app RUN apk add --no-cache python3 make g++ COPY package*.json ./ RUN npm install --only=production COPY . . # Stage 2 - Production FROM node:20-alpine WORKDIR /app COPY --from=builder /app/node_modules ./node_modules COPY --from=builder /app ./ EXPOSE 3000 CMD ["node", "/app/bin/www"] Bonus. Don’t Forget .dockerignore Just like .gitignore, the .dockerignore file excludes unnecessary files and folders from the Docker build context (like node_modules, .git, logs, environment files, etc.). Recommended .dockerignore: node_modules .git *.log .env Dockerfile.dev tests/ Why it matters: Faster builds (Docker doesn’t copy irrelevant files)Smaller and cleaner imagesLower risk of leaking sensitive or unnecessary files Results of Optimization 1. Smaller Image Size: The switch to node:20-alpine and removal of unnecessary packages reduced the image size from 1.36GB, down to 862MB. 2. Faster Build Times: Leveraging caching for dependency installation speeds up rebuilds significantly.Build No Cache:Ubuntu (Old Dockerfile): ~126.2sNode 20 Alpine (New Dockerfile): 78.4sRebuild With Cache (After file changes):Ubuntu: 37.1s (Re-run: npm install)Node 20 Alpine: 8.7s (All Cached) 3. Production-Ready Setup: The image now includes only essential build tools and runtime dependencies, making it secure and efficient for production. By following these changes, your Dockerfile is now lighter, faster, and better suited for production environments. Let me know if you’d like further refinements! Conclusion Optimizing your Dockerfile is a crucial step in building smarter, faster, and more efficient containers. By adopting best practices: such as choosing the right base image, simplifying installed packages, leveraging caching, and using production-ready configurations, you can significantly enhance your build process and runtime performance. In this article, we explored how small, deliberate changes—like switching to node:20-alpine, removing unnecessary tools, and refining dependency management—can lead to.

          08/07/2025

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          Build Smarter: Best Practices for Creating Optimized Dockerfile

          08/07/2025

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          Bao Dang D. Q.

          View Transitions API

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            How to Create Smooth Navigation Transitions with View Transitions API and React Router?

            Normally, when users move between pages in a web app, they see a white flash or maybe a skeleton loader. That’s okay, but it doesn’t feel smooth. Try View Transitions API! Imagine you have a homepage showing a list of movie cards. When you click one, it takes you to a detail page with a big banner of the same movie. Right now, there’s no animation between these two screens, so the connection between them feels broken. With the View Transitions API, we can make that connection smoother. It creates animations between pages, helping users feel like they’re staying in the same app instead of jumping from one screen to another. Smooth and connected transition using View Transitions API In this blog, you’ll learn how to create these nice transitions using the View Transitions API and React Router v7. Basic Setup The easiest way to use view transitions is by adding the viewTransition prop to your React Router links: import { NavLink } from 'react-router'; <NavLink to='/movies/avengers-age-of-ultron' viewTransition> Avengers: Age of Ultron </NavLink> Only cross-fade animation without element linking It works — but it still feels a bit plain. The whole page fades, but nothing stands out or feels connected. Animating Specific Elements In the previous example, the entire page takes part in the transition. But sometimes, you want just one specific element — like an image — to animate smoothly from one page to another. Let’s say you want the movie image on the homepage to smoothly turn into the banner on the detail page. We can do that by giving both images the same view-transition-name. // app/routes/home.tsx export default function Home() { return ( <NavLink to='/movies/avengers-age-of-ultron' viewTransition> <img className='card-image' src='/assets/avengers-age-of-ultron.webp' alt='Avengers: Age of Ultron' /> <span>Avengers: Age of Ultron</span> </NavLink> ); } // app/routes/movie.tsx export default function Movie() { return ( <img className='movie-image' src='/assets/avengers-age-of-ultron.webp' alt='Avengers: Age of Ultron' /> ); } // app.css ... /* This class assign to the image of the movie card in the home page */ .card-image { view-transition-name: movie-image; } /* This class assign to the image of the movie in the movie details page */ .movie-image { view-transition-name: movie-image; } ... Now, when you click a movie card, the image will smoothly grow into the banner image on the next page. It feels much more connected and polished. Animating a single element with view-transition-name Handling Dynamic Data  This works great for a single element, but what happens if you have a list of items, like multiple movies? If you assign the same view-transition-name to all items, the browser won’t know which one to animate. Each transition name must be unique per element — but hardcoding different class names for every item is not scalable, especially when the data is dynamic. Incorrect setup – Same view-transition-name used for all items in a list. The Solution: Assign view-transition-name during navigation Instead of setting the view-transition-name upfront, a more flexible approach is to add it dynamically when navigation starts — that is, when the user clicks a link. // app/routes/home.tsx export default function Home({ loaderData: movies }: Route.ComponentProps) { return ( <ul> {movies.map((movie) => ( <li key={movie.id}> <NavLink to={`/movies/${movie.id}`} viewTransition> <img className='card-image' src={movie.image} alt={movie.title} /> <span>{movie.title}</span> </NavLink> </li> ))} </ul> ); } // app/routes/movie.tsx export default function Movie({ loaderData: movie }: Route.ComponentProps) { return ( <img className='movie-image' src={movie.image} alt={movie.title} /> ); } // app.css ... /* Assign transition names to elements during navigation */ a.transitioning .card-image { view-transition-name: movie-image; } .movie-image { view-transition-name: movie-image; } ... Final output – Smooth transition with dynamic list items Here’s what happens: When a user clicks a link, React Router adds a transitioning class to it.That class tells the browser which image should animate.On the detail page, the image already has view-transition-name: movie-image, so it matches. This way, you can reuse the same CSS for all items without worrying about assigning unique class names ahead of time. You can explore the full source code below: Live DemoSource on GitHub Browser Support The View Transitions API is still relatively new, and browser support is limited:  Chrome (from version 111)Edge (Chromium-based)Firefox & Safari: Not supported yet (as of May 2025) You should always check for support before using it in production. Conclusion The View Transitions API gives us a powerful tool to deliver smooth, native-feeling page transitions in our web apps. By combining it with React Router, you can: Enable basic transitions with minimal setupAnimate specific elements using view-transition-nameHandle dynamic content gracefully by assigning transition names at runtime Hope this guide helps you create more fluid and polished navigation experiences in your React projects!

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            How to Create Smooth Navigation Transitions with View Transitions API and React Router?

            08/07/2025

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