More Pirates..

Avast! Work going well on the pirate theme. Changed the map around and added a chest, coins, a goblet, a pirate hat (tricorn) and a different porthole style.

Here is the widget in full size, in Weather Only mode so you can see the full background image..

Here it is in the main screen, with weather details and forecast..

 

 

3.7.1 Bug Fix Release

Just released a new version 3.7.1, this was to fix an annoying problem discovered by a correspondent for the new Townhouse theme.

In the Raining and Rain Showers weather conditions, the sunset and the night scenes had been mistakenly swapped rounded, so at night the sunset scene was showing and vice versa. This new version fixes that.

In the meantime, work continues apace on the Pirate theme, I am really enjoying this and it looks like its going to be the best looking theme yet.
Will do an improved porthole shortly and still playing around with ideas for the cabin foreground, as you can see below, the sextant, swords and pistols will be improved once I have the correct placement:

Pirate style

Ideas are coming on well for the Pirate Theme:

New version 3.7 released!

So the new version 3.7 of cliMate Animated Weather Widget was released on Monday 29th.

What's new?

First fixed a problem with the fonts on the forecast part of the widget, this only occurred when using Next 3D Launcher, due to a bug in that launcher. I finally developed a work around, and the fonts are perfect now.

 

Then there were a few issues when using the Weather Only setting, the idea here being that no text at all is shown. There were two problems, the Refreshing icon was still showing, and the there was a grey background in the forecast area showing for some weather conditions, as it was expecting to use that to make the forecast details show up better. As there is no need for either of those during Weather Only, they are now hidden.

 

The Font on the wind speed units was not scaling correctly to the screen size, that is now fixed.

Then I improved the Rain Shower and and Snow Shower forecast thumbnails, made the falling rain and snow bigger and easier to see, and the sun and clouds more clear.

And finally, there is a brand new Town House theme. This is actually based on the view from my parent's house in England. It features the usual weather conditions, birds and plane in the background, but in the foreground we have an Audi driving up the driveway, cars driving past on the High Street in the distance, and the flag of your current country waving from the top of the tower behind the trees. The cars have headlights at night. Finally, there is a little solar powered flower toy that moves its leaves based on the amount of sunlight available.

This theme was a labour of love and originally just going to be for my parents and nieces, but I decided to share it with everyone as its a lot of fun!

 

 

So now started work on something completely different, a pirate theme!

 

This simulates the view from a porthole on a pirate ship. The whole view outside the window moves and rotates as if the ship is moving in the sea, looks super realistic. There will be islands and ships moving past, seagulls, maybe dolphins or sharks or a whale, and inside the cabin will be lots of piratical stuff, like chests of gold, treasure maps and cutlasses. The below is a sneak peak of a proof of concept to see how the movement worked. Will start in earnest on that next week.

World Weather Online issues resolved!

The World Weather Online API has resolved its issues, it seemed to be due to server maintenance.

The normal method I used for accessing their API didn't work over the last weekend for some unknown reason, but using slightly different JAVA code access their data did work, so I released a new version 3.6.1 with that variation.

Now, the server has gone back to normal, and the normal method works once again. Nonetheless I am sticking with the new access method for the moment.

Problems with WorldWeatherOnline Weather

There seems to be some problems with the WorldWeatherOnline Weather Provider, it is returning errors since yesterday, you will see a "Please try again later" response.

Apologies for this, I am trying to find out what is going on, it seems like they are doing server maintenance and that might be the cause.

In the meantime you can change Weather Provider to Open Weather Map in the Set Location part of the Setting screen, click on Preferred Weather Data and select Open Weather Map.

cliMate v3.6 Released!

I am pleased to report that version 3.6 of climate Animated Weather Widget has been released.

What does this new version have, you ask?

• Added Night and Sunrise/Sunset scenes to Chinese Art Theme
• Clock can now be moved and resized
• Improved Clock resolution and readability
• Added Portuguese Translation
• Improved Russian and Hungarian Translation
• Bug fixes for clock refresh
• Simplified settings layout

Here are a few examples of the Chinese Art sunset and night scenes:

 

Then for the clock resizing, this is now accessed via the new Clock settings screen available from the main Settings:



The Size and Position setting now lets you drag the clock to any of 9 positions, and drag the slider to change the clock size, all the while seeing a preview of how it will look on your widget:



This works of course for all the clock styles, including analogue, and gives you a lot more freedom to customize your widget. I currently like the look of a smaller clock on the bottom right:



In order to support clock resizing, I have had to improve the resolution and sharpness of the clock, and that have also given me the freedom to change clock fonts in the future, look for that in the next version.

So what's next? I want to have a morning/day/evening/night forecast for the current day, something like the look below. You would then be able to swipe between this and the usual 5 day forecast. This is work in progress, but I know now exactly how to get that daily forecast information.



Then of course, new themes. Still playing around with various ideas, but I do like the idea of a Jungle theme, even though it will be hard to justify a snow scene!



Other ideas include window style frames that could be added to various themes, and perhaps a coastal lighthouse. Keep your ideas for themes coming in!