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!

A new version of the weather gadget is ready for download. Just download and double click the package and it should install over the older version. To check the version just check the settings page and the version is stated at the bottom (unless you have the 1.0.0 version).

• Possible to select hour by hour forecast instead of 9 day forecast as flyout. (requested by Steffan)
• Increased the timer used to check for new weather forecast. No need to check for new weather forecast every few seconds

Enjoy!

A new version of the weather widget is out with some updates based on the feedback I got from users on this blog and on mail.

• Now shows a moon instead of a sun when displaying the midnight weather.
• Fixed a bug that made it sometimes show the wrong current weather when minimized.
• If you write in your custom name for a location and press save the choice will be saved for later and show up in the auto completion search.
• Added version to the setup page to easy see what version is installed.
• When a new version is out you will be notified when entering setup.

I had to create a new name of the .gadget package that did not contain the version number for easy upgrade in the future, but if you have the old application installed you need to right click the sidebar and select “Add gadgets”. Then right click the old weather gadget and select “Uninstall”.

I created a weather report Windows Gadget with data from yr.no this summer and have been using it since then. I now decided that I would like to share this Gadget to others that might want to use it. The design is very simple since it was mean’t as private Gadget and I’m a programmer not a designer, but feel free to create a new design for me and I’ll include it in the application

For more information take a look at weather.larsolavtorvik.com. I used to have my old UWA widget at that address but I removed it for now, atleast temperarly. If you miss it feel free to tell me and I’ll share the code.

I created my first Vista gadget ever today, together with my brother in law Didrik.

It might be the most useless gadget ever… but was fun to create Underscore 1.0 is a gadget that let you type inn text in a textbox and while you type the textbox under will show the text without any underscores.

If you for some strange reason you would like to download it you can get it here: Underscore.gadget. Just double click the file to install it on a Vista machine.