[Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

This semester I'm taking part in an independent study related to weather and mobile development that required me (as a sort of right of passage) to create a preliminary application on a platform of my choice. Being a Maemo user, I obviously chose Maemo!

http://maemo.org/packages/view/qtweather/

Qtweather is a simple weather app that uses data from the National Weather service to display weather info in night/day form. The part I end up using the most is the 'hourly weather chart'.

This isn't the final product of the class, but it is an app none the less, and one that I will be graded on! I wasn't sure if I should upload it or not, but I figured it wouldn't hurt.

The main reason though was to get users to start using it and hopefully find bugs or request features. The better the app is the better my grade is ;). Feel free to scrutinize the source as well. It's my first Maemo/Debian/C++ application (application in general really) so it's entirely possible that I'm not conforming to conventions, or not being as efficient as possible ect...

I just finished it and uploaded it today so it's obviously a work in progress, but any input at all is valuable. If you want to download it, you need to enable the extras-devel repo, and it's under qtweather.

EDIT: Screenshots:

The first of two windows. This is where you get prompted for the zipcode (and soon just a city).

The 'details' screen displays forecasts and hourly weather charts

[

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

screenshot would be much appritiated

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Great news that the Community has another developer!. Thanks!! I'll have a look and test today.:)

Ah wait..seems to be asking for a Zip Code. Guess it's a US only App...for now?

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

yea it is :(

but this is why i posted here, making it global actually wouldnt be hard. I just made sure i had a minimum working app for grading purposes, ill try to update it soon, breaks coming up and ill have plenty of free time

EDIT: i may have mis spoken, it looks like NAOO is a US government site and may be restricted to the us....

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

That's pretty sad as I'm currently looking for an alternate weather app.
Nevertheless will give it a try and report back (given I may access weather data at all from here when entering some valid zipcode).

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

hmm, let me know....the url is hardcoded right now so i feel like people outside of the states may need a .us added onto it....

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Nice app. A simple ui tweak - Make it save the zip code, so it remembers your previous location choice.

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

good idea!
added to my to do

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Tested it shortly and it works quite good, even if it's only for US. Entered zip code 12345 and got data for a town(?) called "Schenectady NY". App looks good but some thing might get improved:
* saving zip code is a must!
* loading time too long
* tapping on left area should also open some detail

Good solved: detail access on right side and overall overview.
But I think it's a quite generic app for data layout from US weather service and not easily adoptable for other data sources.

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Thanks for the input!

*agreed, that will go in soon
*I'll try to work on that, but I'm not sure how much can be done.

*as it stands now, this left pane is kind of redundant. I'm very open to suggestions on how to use it because the information it displays is always going to be less than just clicking that day in the right pane


another thing I'm very open to (in part why I made this post) is UI changes. I'm a programmer, not an artist.... which unfortunately means my app looks boring lol, but I'd like to change that

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Don't mix up 'boring' with 'lucid' ;)
As it is now, the interface is quite clear and well structured. Having today's details on left pane and an overview for next few days on right pane is enough for the starting page. Don't overload it with too much details or graphics. The good thing on grabbing weather data of that kind is you're also getting all needed graphics from them (or do you generate them yourselve? Don't think so). So you just have to arrange them in a way that the user can quickly see all needed info. Going to a details page then could lead to much more information, just as you laid it out already. Therefore I see not much room for improvement :)

But now for content:
Don't know wether your data source offers something like "current conditions", that would be perfect for left pane, having today's forecast as first entry in right pane. Using a big graphic only for left pane would make that page even more clear.

Another idea for startup, when entering zip code. As zip code may contain numbers only (is that right for US?) you should call the keyboard with layout set to numbers only. There should be a way to do that, but I don't have a clue how it works. Hardware keyboard can also be set to numbers only so one cannot enter arbitrary characters. Makes it easier to enter numeric zip code.

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Just installed your updated version (0.7-1) (edit the changelog please!!).

Why did you change the logo? The one before clearly stated it's a weather related app, now it looks like a flying gull ... and what do the letters mean? NORA? NOAA? :confused:

The new layout of left pane is much to heavy! The graphic on bottom is unreadable an has to be scrolled sidewards and downwards: unusable.

Try to gather some easy to read info on left pane like temperature, wind etc. so ione can see at glance what's going on. Long text is too much for main page.

And i just found out that the app works great in portrait mode! :D Well done!

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

lol! the icon is actually the icon for the National Weather Service, taken right from their site...which is of course changable.

im doing something wrong when it comes to the changelog, im nnot sure why it isnt uploading. What im doing is editing my debian/changelog to have * prefixed list entries and then building the package, but i guess that wasnt how you do it....

yea the graph on the left was experimental, i think im gona just make the icon a little bigger, remove the graph and add a little more info to the pane related to today.

i really like the idea of making it number only, gona add that to the list right now. hopefully i find out whats up with the changelog too, its kind of annoying

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Hi antman8969,

nice to see progress in your work. Having two 'homezips' is a good idea! Next you could offer the possibility to switch between them in running app. Currently one has to open options, select the other zip as default, close app and start it again.

Enlarging left pane is also good step in right direction. I guess you wanna keep the graphic in there, that's OK. But you could try to make each pane scroll into just one direction. Right pane scrolls down which is allright as there is a long list of upcoming days. But left pane still scrolls down and to the right. Scrolling the graphics to the right is OK when you don't have to scroll down too to see the graphic. Maybe you could compact the infos on top and maybe leave out the additional imnage? Some big letters showing current condition and that's it.

Didn't test portrait mode yet as my device sometimes behaves 'strange' when setting to portrait, but I guess you could consider making a complete new layout for portrait mode. I think you can change layout when switching landscape<->portrait.

Keep up good work! :)

Re: [Announce] Weather app as part of school project
 

Hey, thanks again for the suggestions!

I think I'm gona slow down a bit with the UI changes, I'm experimenting with Qt Quick for the UI, which is much easier and looks much better than the current UI, which looks kind of generic in my opinion.

I'm looking at a more interactive and dynamic UI than what I have, and I think that's the right approach. I just picked it up yesterday and I've got a semi functional model already so I don't think it will be too much longer