Winterboard from Jay Freeman has opened up a wold of possibilities with it’s ability to display HTML, Java and CSS on the springboard. Today I am going to take a closer look at one of these addition, The WinterBoard Weather Widget.
The WinterBoard Weather Widget was developed by Zetetic Apparatchik over on MacThemes and is mostly coded in XHTML, CSS and JS by Zetetic except for the AccuWeather fetcher ‘borrowed’ from Leopard*.
Data sources are currently either AccuWeather (Apple’s feed*) or Yahoo!Weather (beta-quality). Zetetic had help from Jimmy who located the Klear and Tango icon sets and designed the ’split’ display style.
If you know a little CSS and HTML editing this widget is a snap and you really wouldn’t need my help. But for those of you looking at this wonder what how the hell to make this work for you - this tutorial is for you.
Latest WeatherWidget Download: Click Here
Basic Installation
Having unzipped WeatherWidget.theme.zip you’ll need to edit the file called ConfigureMe.js located at: WeatherWidget.theme/Private/configureMe.js
The Line you’ll need to change is:
reads correctly for your location (e.g. ‘Piarco’, ‘Bridgetown’, ‘Defiance, Ohio’, ‘Moscow, Russia, ‘London, UK’). There are five different Styles to the Weather Widget.
- originalBubble (which places a chiclet like bubble with the weather info inside)
- split (where you get the local and temp on the left and the current weather icon on the right)
- myopia (this is my favorite and is the current weather icon with the temp and locale next to it)
- iconOnly (displays the current weather as an icon only)
- oneLine (displays all info in one line)
Selecting which one you want to use is easy, in the same ‘ConfigureMe.js’ file look at line 21:
var stylesheetWall='myopia'
Change ‘myopia’ in this example to any of the other styles mentioned, just make sure to type them in correctly to any of the styles listed above.. You can also edit the actual Stylesheet for each widget layout by editing the .css files located in the ‘StyleSheets’ folder. Editing the .css will allow you to change font colors, icon size, placement of the widgets etc. Looking at the ConfugureMe file and .css files there is also allot you can add to this widget including adding it to your lockscreen, so fiddle around and enjoy customizing it.
Once you have finished editing the WeatherWidget.theme to display your country and it fits where you would want it, then just copy the entire WeatherWidget.theme folder into:
var/Library/Themes
on your iPhone or iPod Touch and then open up WinterBoard and you should see the new Weather Widget listed, simply turn it on and enjoy.
I have added the Trinidad & Tobago Weather Widget to the Bez Theme (1.1.2) that you can download and install here, no editing required, but you can customize it if you wish. (Please read the ReadMe.txt)
Troubleshooting
Not Found usually indicates you should try a variation on your location (like in Trinidad the capital Port of Spain doesnt work, but our airport, Piarco does). Apple/Accuweather’s backend is very good but can be stumped. (Yahoo!’s is unforgiving.) No Response usually indicates that you need to check your iPhone/iTouch is connected to the Internet. The AccuWeather servers could also be down.
You can try checking with Leopard’s Weather widget that your locale works.
Thanks to Zetetic Apparatchik for this great Widget, if you have any probelms or wish to discuss, please post in the forum.
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General iPhone, springboard, weather widget, winterboard
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