Monday, October 10, 2005

The trouble with WeatherPanel

Although WP is one of the best today weather programs there is, and almost the only one with animations I'm considering removing it from the "What is on my screen" page. Why?

The developer seems to have gone missing for many months, not answering support emails etc. I understand this could be caused by many things: disaster, family emergency... But I'm not sure I can recommend the program until he shows up again.

I'm trying to decide which program I should recommend instead of WP. PocketWeather by SBSH is a strong contender, but sadly it lacks animation support (although I think the developer is going to try to implement it). Spb Weather is another good one - it is also easy to implement into skin packs when it comes to usability since it lets you create an install executable. Spb Weather doesn't have animation support either. I once talked to Vassili from Spb about this and he thinks users don't really want the flashy graphics :D.

Which program do you think should be recommended?

27 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

No doubt about PocketWeather.
Dave

12:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree: Pocket Weather - the prog I switched to after leaving WeatherPanel

Achim

1:12 PM  
Blogger juni said...

It seems logical, but I just hope Jason implements animations soon :)

4:51 PM  
Blogger juni said...

I mean Adrian, of course. SBSH has so many good developers :D

4:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pocket Weather reports weather for more cities than the other options!

3:31 AM  
Blogger juni said...

I am indeed working on "something" right now, with animated icons and a few WA2 skins and PB skins ;).

Spb Weather has another thing going for it though: It has the most accurate forecast for where I am from (since gismeteo can be selected as source).

9:28 AM  
Blogger juni said...

...but then again, maybe some PW wizard can tell me how to set PW up to use gismeteo too? ;

9:28 AM  
Blogger juni said...

There is also another weather program I never tried: Fizzweather
http://www.fizzsoftware.com/pocketpc/fizzweather/index.htm

I hear it has a today plugin too. Has anyone tried this?

9:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I bought SPB Weather. I own Weatherpanel also. I havent had many issues with Weatherpanel, but am hoping SPB will make some improvements soon. Such as radar images and animation. WeatherPanel was just a bit too robust for my needs
I Like SPB Weather quite a bit, even though the hourly reporting method doesnt exactly match Weather.com.

4:01 PM  
Blogger Don said...

For shure SBSH Pocket weather, it wins hands down in my mind!
quick configuration, low memory footprint and exceptional support from the developer!

Don

5:47 PM  
Blogger juni said...

It probably could be done, but then the actual skin zip files would be huge. PocketWeather has a forum:

http://www.sbsh.net/forums/index.php?s=152afdb9863d67545fc233b43cb462a4&showforum=27

8:15 AM  
Blogger michael dyer said...

Does one of them support radar images ?
I like viewing the satellite / radar image also. I've tried both and they seem ok, although I have heard that spb weather has update issues on wm5, which my new axime x51v has.

9:46 PM  
Blogger juni said...

I know PocketWeather lets you define any weather images you want (and the weather detail page is very nice). :)

10:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have tested WP, Spb, SBSH and Fizz weather plugin. Fizz weather uses accuweather.com as a source and accuracy is far better that weather.com (Spb Weather can use alternate sources, but not always available for all locations).
Fizz Software is apparently about to release some new icons including animated ones as you can see at the bottom of this page: http://www.fizzsoftware.com/pocketpc/fizzweather/index.htm

At last: even if a weather application is beautiful (like WP is) and reports many (too many?) information (like WP), what makes it interesting is the relevancy of information it reports.

in other words:
nice looking + inaccurate information (source) = useless
ugly + accurate information = interesting
nice looking + accurate information = that's it!

TransFXB

8:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

SPB doesnt seem to give a day/nite forecast except for the current 2 days.
or was it just my location?

7:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

'Am not sure that Juni's blog is the right place, but, yes Spb gives a day/night forecast only for the two first days, with weather.com as a source.

TransFXB

11:31 PM  
Blogger chris said...

I own licenses for PocketWeather, WeatherPanel, and Spb Weather. The one I use is Spb Weather because it offers the simplest interface, imo. And I don't really need all the other info that PocketWeather and WeatherPanel offer over what Spb Weather displays.

12:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I own PocketWeather and WeatherPanel. After much agonizing, I've gone back to WeatherPanel. It supports three features that I just can't give up and a couple that are nice, but not essential:

1) Full screen radar/map pop-ups when pressing one small button.
2) Support for animated GIF images
3) The ability to parse and display very compliated radar URL's like those generated by Wunderground's custom radar views
4) Animated icons
5) Weather alerts (does PW do this? Now I'm not sure)

6:10 AM  
Blogger michael dyer said...

PocketWeather now has the ability to animate up to 8 previous radar images so its like animated gifs.

Weatherpanel is still the best looking IMHO, But the whole support issue is a big minus.

No weather Alerts in Pocket weather YET, but I think it will come.

10:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, it seems as if Pocket Weather would be the most likely one to try to take on the job of satisfying the WP customers. It is a question of filling in a lot of gaps though and that is something that isn't clear yet. I think Fizz weather is very cool in that you can get ski reports as well. However, the new icons seem to be coming forward slowly. I own it too as I own WP, PW, but Fizz Weather seems to be indicating that animated icons would be HiRes and that is just not going to work for the QVGA users.

8:41 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Today is March 26, 2008 and I still use and love WeatherPanel. I do not know why you bailed when the developer left. He is not the only person out there with talent to keep it running. It now also has its own dedicated server. Looks like you need to read forums more often.

6:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Brandon:
could you provide us with more info, please? I've recently (yesterday) switched from WP to PocketWeather because WP + Wisbar Advance 3 + PhoneAlarm was a very unstable combo, but I miss WP simplicity and beauty. Is there any web place for hacking WP? Thanks

1:31 PM  
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