Lars Olav Torvik’s blog

Today it is 17.May and the Norwegian national day. Norwegian are always very interested in the weather for 17.May since we have big celebrations outdoors and many people plan to take out the barbecue. Not that I plan to be much outdoors today since I’m using crutches after a football injure earlier this week… arg! So since I have been spending some time indoor and to prepere us for the 17.May I have created a new release of the weather widget. Release 1.3.0 is available for download. This is big upgrade from last version so alot of code have been rewritten for this release. Some things you will notice and some “under the hood” fixes Overall I’m very pleased with this release and I hope you the user will be please too.

• Replaced the old template design with a much more versatile solution. You can now select the text and background color. The colors from the old template is still available in the color picker, in addition you can write whatever hex color code you want! Use your favorite image editor or an online color picker to select your perfect color. This should guarantee that the gadget matches any desktop background possible!
• All old background images have been replaced with new dynamic solution using CSS. This result in a minor design difference and makes it much easier for me to add more optional flyout pages etc in the future.
• When you add a new gadget instance it will try and retrieve the name, longitude and latitude based on your IP address! This will especially help all users not located in Norway.
• Default language on the gadget is now based on Windows regional setting. This makes it easier for non Norwegian speaking users since they will not get Norwegian as default language like they used to.
• The default gadget view should now get updated both when you close the settings window and the flyout. This is done so it easy to force a refresh of the widget.
• Fixed bug that didn’t allow negative latitude and longitude.

As allways I apreaciate all feedback I get here, so write away! I’m especially curious on how getting the location based on IP works. I have done some successfull testing on IP’s from bigger cities in Norway and abroad. But I would love to get some feedback on how it work for you!. Do it get the correct location and how small towns do it manage to collect. Also if you live outside a town, what do it find?

There are still some possible errors not fixed, reported in the last version. Somtimes it do not refresh the main window. It might be related to loosing internet connection but it have not been confirmed yet. Also there are some repports that the gadgets opens the flyout out of the screen instead of into the screen like it is suposed too. My suspicions are that this is related to Windows and gadgets in general and not this spesific gadget. If anyone are able to find a way to reproduce this or other usefull feedback please let me know.

Enjoy and have an excellent 17.May celebration!

Tags: gadget, weather

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 03:16:05 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.