Climate retired

The last version 4.1 was released this week, switching off WorldWeatherOnline data, it's yearly subscription had finished and it's no longer cost effective to continue.

It will continue to work with OpenWeatherMap, but there will be no new development or updates.

Best wishes and thanks to those who commented, gave suggestions, and supported the product.

Final Version 4.0 of Climate Animated Weather Widget released

After announcing that I am no longer updating Climate, I had been working on some updates for my own entertainment only.

Having finished and enjoying them, and seeing as its Christmas, I don't see why I shouldn't release them to all my paid customers, so this will be the last version before World Weather Online gets switched off in March.

1. When the forecasts are shown on the widget, they are now fully animated instead of static thumbnails.

This took me a long time to get right so that it didn't disturb the performance of the widget, and there is a tiny bit more of a delay when the minute ticks over, but overall it works very well and looks just as nice as the animated forecasts on the main screen.

2. Improved the moon details. Previously there was 8 different phases of the moon, there are now 16 much higher quality images.

3. At night time, on both widget and main screen, any forecast animation that showed the sun now shows the moon instead, with the correct phase for each forecasted day. This leads to nice effects as below, where you can see how the moon changes over each day.

 

 

So I hope you enjoy, and a merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.

cliMate Animated Weather Widget Version 3.9 released and sad news

Today version 3.9 of cliMate was released.

This has a huge performance increase when opening the main screen, up to 30% of the previous time for the more complex scenes, and at least 70% of the previous time for the simpler scenes.

So what could take 4 or 5 seconds to open now takes 1 or 2.

However, unfortunately and somewhat ironically given the recent Pirate Ship theme, cliMate has been pirated. Because I have to pay for the World Weather Online weather data, this means that people using the pirated version are getting that weather data for free, but because I don't get any money in sales to offset the cost of that data, I am losing money.

So, I am giving up.

The existing World Weather Online data will continue to be available until March 2017, after the app will continue to work but with the less accurate Open Weather Map data only. There will be no more app development or new versions.

It is just not worth the time and effort any more, especially if I am losing money. Thanks, Pirates, you have effectively driven me out of business.

It a shame, but I have still enjoyed the development process, and do feel I created something beautiful, and may well continue to develop it privately for my family and friends.

World Weather Online is down!!

The World Weather Online data provider is currently not working, due to an issue with their network.

This is out of my control, hopefully it will be back up soon.

https://www.facebook.com/worldweatheronline/?fref=ts

Update: It was back up by the evening. :o)

New cliMate 3.8 Demo video

New video showing climate Animated Weather Widget in action...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g02b6tJruVY

New cliMate Animated Weather Widget 3.8.1 bug release

A new version 3.8.1 released today, with two fixes.

1. The Current Temperature started mysteriously disappearing as of this morning! This was due to a change in the World Weather Online service which (annoyingly) changed the way they reported the temperature with no warning whatsoever. Fixed that to use to the way now.
2. The Use Google Play Services checkbox was not remembering the change.

Currently working on a new Demo video to show the current state, as the old video is well out of date. After that will think about new features and themes, but frankly the sales are barely covering the cost of the weather data at the moment, so not sure how long I will bother.

cliMate 3.8 Animated Weather Widget Released!

Last night version 3.8 of cliMate Animated Weather Widget was released.

This has the long awaited new Pirate Theme, with all the usual weather conditions looking out the porthole of a pirate ships cabin onto pitching and rolling seas. Featuring:

Moving sea
Pirate ships
Seagulls
Swinging lantern with a candle that flickers in night and sunset scenes
Moving steering chain

 

 

Like the Town House theme, this consists of many layers of complex animation, so is a lot slower to start the main screen than the other themes, but the widget itself is just as fast and smooth as always.

 

So what is next?

 

1. First I want to redo the YouTube demo video for the widget, as it is woefully out of date, and doesn't show any of the new features or themes.

 

2. There is a new Android PercentageLayout technology available that should let me speed up the main screen considerably, so I will have a look at that next.

  

3. I want to will take another look at the idea of a 6 hour morning, afternoon, evening and night forecast for a particular day.

 

4. Then after that start on some new themes maybe, not sure yet which I will turn my attention to, but perhaps something that is a bit less complex than the last few, as they take so long to do. Something which is a variation of the existing Countryside theme would be a lot quicker to do, maybe with a cottage or castle in the foreground.

 

Other ideas for themes I have had:

 

• Harry Potter style castle with flying broomsticks
• Sherlock Holmes' study
• Airplane porthole
• Beach Cave
• Isle of Skye