Best weather soln on O2 -- my opinion, of course!

[Guest dwallersv]

If your not a crazy weather goofhead like me, move along ;)

I've tried a gazillion different weather solutions, and to this day the best in my opinion is still Weatherpanel. In short, it's free, can handle virtually every city on the planet with detailed weather info, is skinnable and there are many really nice skins/layouts out there, and integrates really nicely with data graphs, maps, road/webcams, etc.

I've been trying to cobble together a solution to using it on the O2 in an efficient manner. It works find in Today on WM6.5, but that means Today needs to be enabled, which vampirically grabs about 5MB all by itself, and then any good, fun WP layout will grab another 10MB or more. If you're running a third party shell (I'm using MS3), you're in bad shape from the standpoint of advanced usability -- good luck keeping more than one app open.

I've found the solution, and it works great! I really like the HTC Diamond weather theme that was implemented as a skin/layout for WP by Rumball. Basically, what I want is an ability to fire off WP like an application, so that when I close it the processes die off and the resources are returned to the system.

Here's the solution, for those of you who want to put this together before I post a CAB (I'm waiting for permission from some of the players here before I roll this all together into a turnkey solution and share it):

1. Disable Today (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Today\Enabled=0)
   
2. Get and install Second Today here. This gives you the ability to start today to host a plugin, then stop it and return resources -- something I can't figure out how to do with MS Today
   
3. Get and install the latest WP here (moon phases and tides updated through 2012).
   
4. Get HTC Diamond theme by Rumball here, and install.
   
5. Start Second Today, configure it to show WP, set on of the softkeys to run the ST quit app (in the Programs\Second Today directory wherever you installed it
   
6. Make a shortcut for the Second Today executable, then add this to your shell homescreen
   

Make sure and run SP, go to the display settings tab, and select the Manial theme, layout, and icon set you installed above.

Now, you can launch WP with an icon click, and when you're done, quit completely and return to your shell.

Rumball included a 5-day forecast layout in his theme... I modified it to extend to 10-days (as the forecast data is downloaded by WP). I'll include this layout in my up-coming CAB.

Edited February 9, 2010 by dwallersv

[Guest stylus1828]

Can you post some screens with the weather application running? Thanks

[Guest acastiyo]

Yes, I would also like to see how it looks.

Thanks!

[Guest dwallersv]

From Rumball's page over on xda...

That's just the HTC theme he put together. There are tons of other themes/skins that people have done for WP, that look radically different.