This is a request - can someone please make a weather Widget for Mac OS X Tiger based on the BBC's weather feeds rather than having to rely on the heavily US-centric example that ships?
I have not the skills, time or money to create it myself...
This fellow had one in development though he appears to have deleted it from his weblog (you can still see a cached image via Google)
http://www.oobrien.com/weblog/
It is surely only a matter of time until there are several available, though one that combines the BBC data with the graphical loveliness of the built in one would be fab.
The thing the BBC really needs to do in order to make building a UK Weather Widget, is provide the weather information in XML or RSS format.
It's not impossible to get this information from the BBC site in other formats i.e. HTML but it takes so long filtering and parsing out the HTML to get to the relatively few lines of information required that it becomes a big job.
An XML/RSS feed would mean the Widget could be made in literally a couple of hours.
Come on Beeb, lets have the weather in pure information format.
Yes i agree this would be very useful
Don't have the time or skill to do it either...
The XML weather feed is an execellent idea but I'll remind you that the UK Met Office actually own the data and it is a commerical organisation. The BBC role is more or less to be responsible presenting that weather data.
I would NOT recommended writing a screen scraper. Whilst it is technically possible it would not be really practical plus the data is NOT own by BBC Weather Centre and this would be forcing them to take measure to prevent this (the screen scrapping of data). This is not really fair on the small (but execellent) weather team and certianly not within the spirit backstage.
Cheers
Luke
Ex-BBC Weather Senior Developer
The BBC's weather information *is* available as an XML feed - it's part of their WML offering.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/wap/5day.wml?id=1559
That's the weather for Whitstable...replace the id variable with the variable for the location of your choice...
Please do this - if it had a BBC logo (and one from the Met Office?) surely it would be consistent with the public service remit?
There's a home-made widget that takes the data straight from the met office but it looks bad and has limited functionality
I think it would be great if the BBC produced a Weather Widget themselves.
If it's viewable on their web site why should they mind it being viewable on a Widget.
If there's a widget programmer out there willing to work on it with me, I'd design one. It was the first thing I thought of looking for when I installed Tiger. The Apple weather widget's 'photo-realistic' icons are over the top and not very legible in the 6-day forecast row. A much simpler widget with clear, simple icons is what's needed. In terms of data ownership and use, looking up a BBC widget with BBC/Met Office links would in practice be no different from looking up the BBC website, as I see it.
Whats a Widget? (Apart from the thingie at the bottom of certain tinnies!)
i agree, a bbc branded weather widget would be nice. i'm designing a 'weather widget' for a client's web site and coming up with anything nearly as clear and beautiful as the bbc's is a daunting task.
check out this link to see weather icons from press web sites:
http://www.jdawiseman.com/papers/trivia/weather-icons.html
I'm the author of the WeatherUK widget that takes Met Office data.
If you think its appearance is bad, you should have seen the first version: I'm a programmer not a graphic designer, lol.
If anyone wants to send me HTML and .png s for a better look please feel free, I'd be happy to use it.
I looked at both BBC and Met Office weather data for a while and decided the MO was better.
This is the reason I stumbled onto this page. I wanna BBC weather widget like a 3 yo wants ice cream!
VN
I've just updated my WeatherUK widget to version 1.1. Temps now in degrees F or C and day only dates.
Hey John,
I've been trying to download your WeatherUK widget from the apple dashboard site but it never decompresses correctly - and at matriciel.co.uk .....nada.
Did the suits at the Met get to you ?
I am a former BBC Weather - Senior Developer. I think the would be issues with right to re-use the Data in this way.