WeatherPanel from MarsWare Tech trial [Archive]

View Full Version : WeatherPanel from MarsWare Tech trial

Jimmy Dodd

04-27-2004, 02:45 PM

I'm looking at the trial for WeatherPanel from MarsWare Technologies (which is currently mentioned on the front page) and it doesn't seem to work for me. My five day forecast is

(today) Tue Wed Thu Fri Thu

Today being Tuesday leads me to believe that it is a little confused. The fact that this week seems to have an extra Thursday thrown in after Friday makes me think it is a lot confused. :roll:

Also, once it downloads the data it doesn't seem to have a way of refreshing the data. I don't know if this is a limitation of the trial or indicative of the final product.

Anyone else using the trial?

ChristopherTD

04-27-2004, 02:55 PM

Saturday has also been abolished in my trial version, I see Thu like you. I posted a query about this on the support page, but haven't heard yet.

I have been watching its behaviour today and it seems to update automatically every half an hour (if a connection is available). There doesn't seem to be a way to refresh manually.

Stephen Beesley

04-27-2004, 03:17 PM

cklaszlo

04-27-2004, 03:19 PM

This won't run on my PPC.

Mobile 2003
Toshiba E755

Running on my Home Page:
Calender +
Syswatch

I tried running off of my CF Card and also local Mem. No go. I can't click on the weather bar to set any preferences. I get a blank bar with their logo and then a scroll bar.

Anyone can help? Thaks!

Deltrevan

04-27-2004, 03:37 PM

Same Here. It doesn't run on my Toshi E-805 either. I got the same result as above (blank bar with scrollers) when I tried to run from local memory. And, I got a locked up PPC when I tried to run it from either of my storage cards (SD & CF).

I'm gonna pass. I have Journal Bar anyway. Plus, I think it's very uncool for them to disable the lows during the time limited trial. Not to mention the fact that they will only accept Paypal for payment (Gawd, I hate Paypal). So, in all, tooooo many restrictions for my blood.

Jimmy Dodd

04-27-2004, 03:51 PM

For the folks who can't seem to see anything: did you go into Settings | Today | WeatherPanel | Options and set your zip?

The little circular arrows may be refreshing it after all. The time changes when I tap them, and my city finally changed. Still no Saturday though. Looks like this is going to be a long week. :wink:

Does anyone know where they are getting their data?

piperpilot

04-27-2004, 06:18 PM

When I installed it, I had a blank screen too, but I tapped on the little sun icon in the upper right hand corner and that activated my forecast. The first block shows the current conditions. The next one shows the forecast for the whole day. I, too, have Saturday displayed as Thursday. Will be interested to see what their explanation is. As for the refresh rate, it seems to work automatically. Before I went to lunch, it was showing the current temperature as 58 degrees. It is now showing 60 degrees.

oguime

04-27-2004, 07:44 PM

As soon as I noticed the bug I used the support page to warn the author.
He was kind enough to reply and post a new version, but it seems to me that the last forecast still reports the wrong week day.

I've e-mailed him again, let's wait for an answer.

Regards,

Gilson

cklaszlo

04-27-2004, 08:12 PM

I reinstalled it 2x I'm now getting the data but I too am getting Thrus for Sat.

joelw135

04-27-2004, 08:40 PM

I am sorry this software was created by corporate America. Now we have one extra work day to your week, don't you think that was nice of us?

Wiggin

04-27-2004, 09:17 PM

Anyone want to guess what the MarsWare company logo of an open pill bottle has to do with a PPC Weather App? :silly:

check it out here (http://www.marsware.net)

piperpilot

04-28-2004, 01:04 PM

I just re-downloaded the application. The problem with Sat. showing as Thu. seems to have been resolved.

Lucutus

04-28-2004, 02:46 PM

I downloaded mine yesterday afternoom (GMT) and today I see that it gives me info for today's weather but then continues with Fri, Sat, Sun (missing tomorrow's Thursday) and then starts again at Sat, continuing with Sun.

Anybody else had this?

I'll try and download again and will let you know if resolved...

piperpilot

04-28-2004, 02:51 PM

Mine shows current weather, followed by today, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Just as it should be. I downloaded it a couple of hours ago, so it may be that they updated the software overnight. Try downloading again.

Lucutus

04-28-2004, 06:16 PM

Cheers, Piper!
Works now! Must have released an update!

But what is all this about "current weather" and "today"? I get that as well.
Does that mean it gives you current temperature and weather and then temperature and weather, like, of today's afternoon/evening/night?

...it seems to be accurate, though...do others also agree that it's predicting correctly?

piperpilot

04-28-2004, 06:44 PM

But what is all this about "current weather" and "today"? I get that as well.
Does that mean it gives you current temperature and weather and then temperature and weather, like, of today's afternoon/evening/night?

...it seems to be accurate, though...do others also agree that it's predicting correctly?

It does seem to be pretty accurate. For instance, the forecast on the radio this morning called for sun with a high of 65 F. The forecast on WeatherPanel calls for sun with a high of 62 F. The 3 degree difference is accounted for by the fact that the radio gives the forecast for Washington, DC and I have WeatherPanel set up to give me weather at my home which is (a) in the country, and (b) 30 miles north of DC. So, I think it's pretty accurate. The current conditions also seem to be accurate.

juni

04-29-2004, 01:34 PM

They implemented the icons I made for them in 1.1 - with transparencies. :)

oguime

04-29-2004, 03:45 PM

Juni,

I got 1.1 full but still see the icons in square boxes without transparencies shown in their home page...

Pixelnose

04-30-2004, 01:39 AM

Marsware should update their website so that you can see how much cuter the icons are now. ;)

juni

04-30-2004, 06:11 AM

I'm also curious about how the 64x64 pixel weather icons will look on VGA devices, but maybe that is still in beta. :)

Lucutus

04-30-2004, 11:31 AM

@piper:
thanks for your confirmation! Do you know what time of the current day the "current" and "today" is meant to be for? Morning and evening?

@juni: is that version 1.1? Have they just made that available, ie. yesterday? new icons?

have a good weekend. all of you!

piperpilot

04-30-2004, 03:20 PM

The current is for whatever time the last update was performed. For example, because I just got to work and haven't been able to synch yet, the "current" conditions are as of 6:52 a.m. when I last had access to the Internet via my wireless LAN at home. The Today reading is the high, low and general forecast for the day as a whole from what I have been able to observe.

Martian

04-30-2004, 05:49 PM

Hello guys,

I just wanted to clear up some issues that people were having.

1) The trial version posted a couple of days ago had a bug which caused it to display incorrect day lables. We have posted an updated trial version, which corrects this and other issues, and we encourage you to try it out.

2) We have an upgrade coming out, which uses the fabulous new icons designed by juni, as well as some other feature requests that people have requested. Before we release the upgrade however, we are working on a automated system to allow our current customers to have easy access to the latest versions.

If you guys have any further questions or comments, we are eager to hear them.

Regards,

piperpilot

04-30-2004, 05:54 PM

Seeing as how I have less than a 5% chance of winning one of the ten free copies of the program being given away here at PPCT, I purchased the full version today. It's great being able to check the current conditions and forecast for four different locations. This way, I can see the difference in temps between where I live and where I work, in South Florida where my folks live and my hometown in New Hampshire. Love it, and I can't wait for the upgrade with the new icons.

jlp

05-02-2004, 11:24 PM

squiggs1982

05-03-2004, 01:35 AM

If you guys have any further questions or comments, we are eager to hear them.

Thanks for the updated version with correct labels.

However, tho I installed the trial version 4-5 days ago it stopped working on May 1st 8O.

Must be a bug there too?! :(

Yup, I installed it three days ago and now the trial period's over. Sad thig is, I didn't really get a chance to check it out and from what I did see, the forecasts for my area weren't particularly accurate. (11 degrees, cloudy/rainy - actual conditions, glorious sunshine 26 degrees, which is what the telly said!)

I'd be willing to purchase it if I'd had a chance to use it and check if it does work, but due to my exams last week it just didn't happen. Ho hum! :(

ignar

05-03-2004, 05:02 AM

VintageSlots

05-04-2004, 02:59 AM

I'm comparing WeatherPanel and Weather Today. Each has pros and cons. Weather Today works well, but it takes too much space. It has more features such as stock quotes, theme switcher, animated icons, etc, but I don't need most of them. I just want a mean and simple weather information on my Today screen. A nice part of Weather Today is it gives more information than just a weather/high/low temp. Clicking on the panel shows detailed information and even provides an external link to a weather web site. Weather Panel, on the other hand, has simpler and cleaner look, which I prefer to Weather Today's. Also it has much smaller footprint. Featurewise, I like to see it provide more information. Also I wish both WeatherPanel and WeatherToday use smaller fonts and icons, or at least give users an option to customize them. Currently it takes too much portion of Today screen. I think the size of the Journal Bar is about right. In fact, I like the weather feature of Journal bar a lot, but decided not to use it because of OmegaOne's upgrade policy and JB's memory leak issue. So, at this point, I'm more inclined to purchase a Weather Today, but if WeatherPanel is going to address my needs soon, I may change my mind. :)

I am one of the developers of Weather Today and would like to address the issues raised in the previous post.

We try to provide as much information as possible on the Today Screen. In addition, we allow the user to decide on how much is shown. For example, they can show stocks and weather at the same time.

http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0001.gif

Or they can decide to show stocks and weather in the same area (reducing the display footprint). Of course, if they don't want stocks, then stock information is not displayed at all.

http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0002.gif http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0003.gif

In addition, the user can decide the format of the weather information displayed.

http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0004.gif http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0002.gif http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0007.gif

As you can see, all the different formats require different display footprints.

Now, let's look at one of the display footprints in more detail.

http://www.StocksAndWeatherToday.com/ppc0002.gif

As you can see, we not only display the current weather as an icon (tapping on it takes you to the detailed forecast), but we also display the name of the city, the local time (tapping on the city name hides the local time) in that city, and the current conditions in text format. In addition, space needs to be allocated for the red exclamation point which indicates there is a hazardous weather alert (tapping on it displays the alert). In addition, we need room for the theme advance icon (just to the left of the hazardous weather alert). Tapping on the theme advance icon will force a new weather related theme to be displayed which matches the city. Now, below all this information is the area for a 5 day forecast. including icons and hi/low temperature information. We also need space for the down arrow (tapping it forces the application to refresh the data) and the right arrow (tapping it cycles to the next city)

We actually do dynamically change the font size, based on how many characters are on the city name and the current conditions text. The application attempts to pick the largest font possible for the display. In general, we think it does a very good job.

We could reduce the footprint of the display by not displaying the name of the city. This is OK if you are tracking only one city, but if you are tracking more than one city (we currently support up to 6) then we think it is vital to be show the city name on the display.

We are currently looking at ways to allow the user to further customize the display. We added the above options directly because of user input.

However, there is a fine line where adding too many options makes the application too cumbersome to use for most (not all) users.

Anyway, it is good there are several choices out there since it is impossible for one application to meet everyone's needs.

Our upgrade policy has been the following and there are no plans to change it.

We currently sell Stocks Today, Weather Today, and "Stocks and Weather Today". All three applications are the same executable. The registration key dictates what functionality is available. The reason we do this, is that it allows us to have a single code base and all applications get updated at the same time (for example, when we put auto proxy detection in, all three got it at once). In addition, it allows the user to purchase just the functionality that they need. As we improve the application and add new features we slowly increase the price. However, we have always allowed previous users to upgrade to new functionality for free. We have never made a statement on our web page, Handango, or PocketGear that we will never charge for upgrades (because never is a long time). For example, when we added stock functionality to Weather Today, we came out with a new product called Stocks and Weather Today. Users who purchased Weather Today a couple of years ago for $3.99 can run Stocks and Weather Today with the same registration key. They will not get stock functionality, but will get all the improvements to weather (e.g., international cities, local time, hazardous weather alerts) for free. We have no plans on trying to get more money out of our existing base by adding minimal new functionality and making that available via so-called expansion packs or product rebranding.

Anyway, I hope this posting is not out of line. I just wanted to explain why the display of Weather Today is formatted as it is and also disclose what our current upgrade policy is.

If you have suggestions on how we can improve it, feel free to send an email to [email protected]

Thanks

ignar

05-04-2004, 03:30 AM

Thanks for the input, VintageSlots. I think WeatherToday is an excellent program. Here are my thoughts.

1. I understand why you provide only one package for three applications, but I wish there is an option to allow users to install only functionalities they want. When I mentioned space, I meant RAM space as well as screen real estate. Weather today seems to take about 700KB, which is not small number considering it has to be installed on the RAM. I also noticed the majority of the space is taken by icon files (about 500KB), and though animated icons are nice, I'd rather be much happier with simple icons with small footprint.

2. I know you are providing a theme package, but do you have plan to provide an icon package as an add on? The default ones are not bad, but I've seen prettier ones and it'd be nice if I can easily replace icons.

3. As for the city information display, I think Journal Bar is handling it pretty well. It shows a tiny number on the left side of the panel where the number represents the city. Most of time, I need to check the weather of only two cities, and have no problem recognizing which number means which city. In case user gets confused, you can make clicking on the icon show the city name and other detailed weather information.

4. I gotta mention the red exclamation mark. No offense, but it's not the pretties icon I've seen. :wink: Maybe you want to make it a little smaller and cuter?

VintageSlots

05-04-2004, 04:37 AM

I will attempt to address your comments/questions below ...

Thanks for the input, VintageSlots. I think WeatherToday is an excellent program. Here are my thoughts.

1. I understand why you provide only one package for three applications, but I wish there is an option to allow users to install only functionalities they want. When I mentioned space, I meant RAM space as well as screen real estate. Weather today seems to take about 700KB, which is not small number considering it has to be installed on the RAM. I also noticed the majority of the space is taken by icon files (about 500KB), and though animated icons are nice, I'd rather be much happier with simple icons with small footprint.

---> Yes, the icons take the majority of the space. If you don't want the animated icons then you can delete them. They are in the icons folder and all end in a digit. Most people really like them, but feel free to delete them if you like. Perhaps in the future we will make it an option to not install them. You are the first to request this and we will consider it. Removing the stock functionality from WeatherToday would not save that much space (we do a LOT of reuse) and we think the few extra bytes required are not that big of a deal. Plus, we take a lot of effort to make sure there are no memory leaks. As Martha would say, Memory Leaks are not a good thing! 8O

2. I know you are providing a theme package, but do you have plan to provide an icon package as an add on? The default ones are not bad, but I've seen prettier ones and it'd be nice if I can easily replace icons.

---> We do not imbed the icons in the application, instead they are in a folder. People are free to modify them as they see fit. If anyone wants to redesign the icons and give them to us, we will make them available for no charge. If someone want to come up with their own design then we have no problem with them selling them on their own. If they want us to sell them, then well, we need to talk. We will consider it on an individual basis. However, we will not provide our customer list to anyone (for obvious reasons).

3. As for the city information display, I think Journal Bar is handling it pretty well. It shows a tiny number on the left side of the panel where the number represents the city. Most of time, I need to check the weather of only two cities, and have no problem recognizing which number means which city. In case user gets confused, you can make clicking on the icon show the city name and other detailed weather information.

---> In our opinion, that is OK if you only handle two cities. However, handling 6 means you have to remember a lot more. Our customers have told us that they want to see the city name and also the time. We knew some people would not care about the time. That is why we made it easy to not display the time (on a city by city basis).

4. I gotta mention the red exclamation mark. No offense, but it's not the pretties icon I've seen. :wink: Maybe you want to make it a little smaller and cuter?

----> Sorry about that. We will look into enhancing it :wink: Feel free to provide us a different one :lol:

Kati Compton

05-04-2004, 04:40 AM

3. As for the city information display, I think Journal Bar is handling it pretty well. It shows a tiny number on the left side of the panel where the number represents the city. Most of time, I need to check the weather of only two cities, and have no problem recognizing which number means which city. In case user gets confused, you can make clicking on the icon show the city name and other detailed weather information.
As a WeatherToday purchaser and user, I'd vote against this. Maybe have an option?

jkendrick

05-04-2004, 04:49 AM

I'm also curious about how the 64x64 pixel weather icons will look on VGA devices, but maybe that is still in beta. :)

I'm beta testing the VGA version- did you do these icons? They're really nice.

Look for my post in this thread for the screen image:

http://www.pocketpctools.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1463&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=5871e9a9c3166c46cc2b7af923ff0d4f

juni

05-04-2004, 06:38 AM

It doesn't show your screenshot, jkendrick.

But yes, I made the icons. :)

jkendrick

05-04-2004, 01:15 PM

It doesn't show your screenshot, jkendrick.

But yes, I made the icons. :)

Last message in the 1st page of the thread linked above has an inline screen shot.

Dave Potter

05-04-2004, 05:51 PM

It doesn't show your screenshot, jkendrick.

But yes, I made the icons. :)

Juni - you should do up a batch of icons for WeatherToday!
I like the app - but the icons are sorta boring.

ChristopherTD

05-06-2004, 10:22 AM

WeatherPanel has been updated to 1.5 and now includes Juni's icons. Very sweet, and because we get such a lot of interesting weather here in the UK we get to see lots of them at once!

It looks very nice indeed now.

http://td.typepad.com/photos/family/wpanel.jpg

Martian

05-07-2004, 07:12 PM

Hello guys,

Our apologies to those experiencing problems with the trial. The problem stems from the fact that we had originally intended the software to be released around April 1, and the trial was designed to work during April. Unfortunately, the release got pushed back towards the end of April, and we neglected to update the trial accordingly.

In any case, we have fixed all the outstanding problems with trial, and have updated it with the new icons designed by juni (http://www.kolumbus.fi/anders.ruohio/skinz.html). You can download the updated version at our website, www.marsware.net