[AgTitan06]

A few people have asked about my "weather app" from my quicklaunch screenshots. Well, it's not really a weather app, but a few nifty little shortcuts I created in Quicklaunch to make for a really nice looking browser-based weather app. I will outline the steps below:

1) Purchase and install QuickLaunch. If you do not have or do not want QuickLaunch, you can simply make bookmarks in your browser, but QuickLaunch makes it a lot easier.

2) Goto National and Local Weather Forecast, Hurricane, Radar and Report

3) Enter your zip code in the Local Weather search box.

4) Once the TODAY'S WEATHER comes up for your zip code, scroll down to the radar image. Then click on ORIGINAL RADAR MAP.



5) This will then bring up a dropdown menu with various weather maps that you can right click, and select view image address. I prefer to use the Doppler Radar 300 miles and the South Central US Weather maps.



6) So find the maps you want to use, and locate and copy the image address, then paste it somewhere so you can know what web address to program into your QuickLaunch shortcut.





7) When you open the shortcuts on your phone, open them in LANDSCAPE mode first. Once the image loads, simply click the middle of the screen to get rid of the white bars on the top and bottom of the image. Then it takes up the full screen and you can rotate to portrait mode also.

Note: Be sure to go into Internet Options, and enable FULL SCREEN MODE, and set image quality to HIGH.

8) Next, I like to program a shortcut for current weather info and forecast. Simply, program this web shortcut into your QuickLaunch, replacing 77002 with your local zipcode:
Weather Underground (Mobile)

So, for someone in Houston, TX, you would program the following 3 shortcuts into your QuickLaunch:

Weather Underground (Mobile)


http://i.imwx.com/web/radar/us_iah_u..._plus_usen.jpg


http://i.imwx.com/images/maps/curren...sc_720x486.jpg


Enjoy...Hope you like it, I know it's been my favorite "weather app"...Best of all, no memory leak from it!

[AgTitan06]

A few more screenshots..

[tdog7879]

thankyou .....thankyou ...cant wait to give this a shot!!!

[rfdesort]

Is there a realtime home screen icon like in most apps?

[CheetahAce]

wow. this is awesome! thanks!

[AgTitan06]

Is there a realtime home screen icon like in most apps?

This is all web-based. There are no downloads..Just follow the steps to program your local city's current weather, forecast, doppler radar, weather map, etc. into QuickLaunch. So, to answer your question, there is no icon on your homescreen, no physical program to install.

[Storm_Warning]

Thanks for the Tip! Worked like a charm

[AgTitan06]

wow. this is awesome! thanks!

Maybe you can figure out how to program this into QuickLaunch on future releases. The only problem is the radar images are not easily able to be made into variables to just swap out zip codes. The URL is different for each location and is not based on a zip code..That's why you have to go through those steps to get the exact URL for the radar you want. Now you could program the Mobile Weather Underground in there since it's easy to just swap zip codes. I think the only way you could get the radar to work would be to find all the URL's for the radar images, then make a database corresponding city's to various URLs. But that sounds like a lot of work..lol

[Ltapilot]

Nice work THANKS

[nemo-maritime]

Cool. I'm going to point out that shortcut me users should also be able to get this. I think any shortcut app would be able to use this. As long as they support browser shortcuts.

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[ltrtiger]

Very nice. I've used a link for the current conditions/10 day forecast, but didn't think to use the map images. Well done and thanks!

[bearkat38]

I like it!

[Bob61]

Smart idea - thanks!

[brandonscott]

Pretty sweet!

Heh, I see my town (Alvin, TX)

[mgm1979]

Pretty slick - just set mine up...deleted Weatherbug; gotta see if I can stand not having the weather on my home screen all the time.

[SoCalSpecialist]

wait what?

i dont get it..this confused the heck outta me

[AgTitan06]

wait what?

i dont get it..this confused the heck outta me

What don't you understand?

[ejackson]

Ok - guess I'm gonna be the dUmMy here. I tried your method for the doppler radar map. I opened weather.com and entered my zip code (16354), then clicked on "Original Radar Map", I then copied the web address (weather.com - Large Maps)

http://www.weather.com/outlook/health/airquality/map/16354?from=36hour_map&bypassredirect=true

, emailed it to my BB then clicked on link.

When I open the link on my BB, this is what I get:


Do I need to change some browser setting or something? I did change browser settings to Full Screen and Image quality to High.

[ejackson]

OMG - I am stOOpid! Just figured out what I was doing wrong! Use the link for the image, not the web link. Damn I think I was having a blonde moment!

Sorry...

[BerryNick]

Works great. Set up satellite maps for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to get ready for Hurricane season.

[storm-season]

That is pretty nifty

[mgm1979]

is there not a way to use the animated images? I tried a couple things last night, and was either doing it wrong, or it doesn't work in the same way.

[hurld]

You can do the same thing using Accuweather, which has much better radar images that are in motion. I did this with QL a long time ago, didn't realize others didn't have it set up this way.

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[carlos31820]

You can do the same thing using Accuweather, which has much better radar images that are in motion. I did this with QL a long time ago, didn't realize others didn't have it set up this way.

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Thanks for the post. I agree. The Accuweather images are nicer and animated. You can also zoom in closer than you can with weather.com. The closest zoom I could do at weather.com for my zip was the 600-mile doppler. I was able to zoom to about a 100 mile map, clicked animate and copied the URL of the resulting image.

Thanks again.

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[AgTitan06]

Yea I used to use the accuweather ones but I found the weather.com ones and I have preferred them better. Ill post some info I gathered a few months ago on the url for the accuweather images. There are lots of options in the url u can tinker with. Will post later this afternoon

You can do the same thing using Accuweather, which has much better radar images that are in motion. I did this with QL a long time ago, didn't realize others didn't have it set up this way.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com