Installing widgets

A common question from users is how to install the widgets that come with the application. How you install widgets on your device depends on which operating system (OS) version you are on. Not sure which version you are on? Go to Settings->About Phone->Software Information. Your OS version is found under 'Android version'.

If you are on Honeycomb or earlier (i.e. OS version is less than 4.0) then do the following:

Find a home screen with space on it for your widget (swipe left or right from the main home screen if the main screen has no space left). A small widget requires the same space as 1 icon, the medium widget requires 2 icon spaces and the large widget requires 4 icon spaces (all horizontally). Once you've located your space, press and hold the screen at that space. A menu should pop up. Depending again on your device's manufacturer what you see may be slightly different, but there should be an option to add a widget. On my device, it is listed as 'Widget' under 'Add items to Home'. Scroll to the bottom of the list of widgets which appear and look for 'Weather Forecast: UK (Large/Medium/Small)' and choose the size you wish.

If you are on Ice Cream Sandwich or newer (i.e. OS version is equal or higher than 4.0) then do the following:

Open the app drawer (the place where all your application icons are). Select the 'widgets' tab at the top of the screen and scroll down/over to Weather Forecast:UK small/1x1, medium/2x1 or large/4x1. Press and hold the widget you want and drag it onto your homescreen where you want to put it.

I followed the above instructions but still can't see the widgets

First time use

The current location is shown in the action bar at the top of the screen. Pressing this ("Leeds" in this case) will open the location side bar (shown at right). Alternatively, you can press the application icon or drag your finger from the far left of the screen to the middle to 'catch' and drag open the sidebar. To close the side bar, either press the application icon button again, tap anywhere in the application window which has been shifted towards the right or press and hold and drag the application window back to the left. In the sidebar, you will find a history of recent locations viewed (with most recently viewed at the top of the list). You can select one of these to quickly change to this locations forecast. Alternatively, you can choose a new location. Also shown is the current conditions for the currently selected location, the sunrise/sunset times for this location, when the forecast was last updated (e.g. fecthed from the Met Office) and when the Met Office issued the forecast (when available). Within this view you can also remove individual locations from your recent locations list

The display button

This button is labelled with the current view. Press this to see other view options.

Five Day Forecast View

This view shows the five day forecast for the current location. If there are more data columns that the screen is able to show, then simply swipe left to scroll to the next horizontal page of data (i.e. see the additional columns). The columns which are displayed is configurable. See Understanding the application menu

Textual View

This view shows a textual forecast provided by the Met Office. It is broken down into "Day 1 to 2", "Day 3 to 5", "Day 6 to 15" and "Day 16 to 30". When first viewed you are looking at the "Day 1 to 2" view. To see the other days views, you can either swipe left or right to move through the views or select any of the tabs at the top of the screen (under the action/location bar). If the tab you want is off the screen, the tab bar itself horizontally scrolls. Textual forecasts are based on the region the current forecast location is in and not specific to the exact location. E.g. For a current forecast location of Edinburgh, the textual forecast will be shown for Lothian and the Borders region. The exception to this is day 6 and beyond which shows the overall UK outlook.

Charts View

This view shows a graphical display of all weather forecast data for the current location. Effectively, every available column for display in the 5 day forecast has been made into a graph or chart. Like the textual forecast view, you can move between charts by swiping left or right. Alternatively, you can select one of the tabs at the top of the screen (under the action/location bar). If the tabs spill off the screen you can horizontally scroll to see the other choices. For each chart/graph you have 3 viewing options. '5 day' shows the 5 day view for this chart. '24 hours' is the same as 5 day but only shows data for the next 24 hours. '5 Day summary' shows the high and low value for each day over the 5 days.

Mountain View

This view shows mountain specific forecasts. As the forecast for a mountain area is often dramatically different than for settled areas they truly deserve their own forecast. Available are forecasts for 7 different mountain regions within the UK. Initially shown is the list of areas to choose from and the current overall risk associated with that area. Selecting a region will drill down into the detailed forecast for that area. Within the detailed forecast are a number of different tabs of data which you can swipe left and right between, showing a list of hazards for that area, the overview forecast for the next 24 hours, and textual forecasts for today and the next few days. Pressing the location icon in the action/location bar takes you back to the mountain area list page.

Warnings View

Observations View

The Met Office have a host of observation locations across the UK which measure real weather data. This view shows the closest observation location to the current forecast location. Also shown is the approximate distance in miles of the observation location from the forecast location. Note that there are many more forecast locations than observation locations. Shown in the table are the actual observations over the last 24 hours. Note that not all observation locations are equal in terms of what data they provide. Therefore, for example, an observation location may show data for wind speed whilst another may not.

Maps View

	The maps view shows various observed and forecast imagry overlaid onto Google Maps. Forecast types available are: Rainfall (observed and forecasted) Cloud - hint, best viewed in satellite mode (forecast only) Cloud and Rain - a combination of the two above (forecast only) Temperature - where colors represent bands of temperature (forecast only) Surface pressure (forecast only) Satellite Infrared (observed only) Satellite Visible (observed only) Satellite Infrared and radar (observed only) Lightning (observed only) Map supports pinch zooming (or you can use the zoom buttons). Click on the default 'Rainfall' button to change mode. Click on the date button to jump to a different observation or forecast time (only available in the premium version). You can also use the left/right arrows to step forwards and backwards in time.
	Your approximate location is shown on the map with a red circle. Your location is determined using network triangulation rather than GPS. While network location is less accurate than GPS, it is much more kind on your battery and given the resolutions involved the accuracy provided by GPS isn't necessary.
Press this globe icon to switch between satellite terrain mode and normal map mode. Satellite mode is most useful for viewing cloud cover which shows a good contrast of the clouds and green earth. Choose the arrows icon to recentre the map on a UK wide overview.

The menu

Pressing the phone's menu key on any of the views will present the user with these options at a minimum:

• Settings: Configure the application to your needs
• About: See the application version and send an email to the developer
• Help: Opens this page in a browser

The following options are available in any forecast view (5-day, textual, charts or observations)

• Refresh: Force the application to refresh the forecast and weather warnings data. Textual forecast and observations data will also be refreshed if those views are currently displayed.

The following options are available in maps view

• Reload Map: Force the application to refresh all map data from scratch

Settings menu item

This menu allows you to configure the display of the application. Specifically, you can configure which columns appear in the weather forecast table, which columns appear in the observations table, configure weather warnings preferences and locations preferences

Location preferences sub menu

There are two options currently supported.

The first allows you to clear out any location information, removing all recent locations from your list. Only your current location is retained. The second option allows you to configure how many locations are saved in the history list (up to 20).

Weather warnings preferences sub menu

There is one option currently supported.

'Add warning icon to widgets', determines if you wish to show a warning triangle icon on your widget (in the lower left corner) if the forecast location for that widget has active weather warnings.

Map preferences sub menu

There are two options currently supported.

Untick 'Show current location' to hide the red circle on the maps view which denotes your current location.

The 'Cache size' option allows you to have control over how much data the maps cache. Caching is essentially saving in memory map tiles which aren't currently displayed on the screen. If you move back to a previous portion of the map, and that tile is in the cache, then it doesn't have to be reloaded. Caching is particularly effective when you step back and forth between timesteps to see movement of rainfall, for example, over time. If enough tiles are cached, then this stepping back and forth is near instant, whereas otherwise tiles need to be loaded again from the network. The downside to caching is that it takes up a lot of memory which not all devices have. If you do lots of stepping back and forth, choose a larger cache size. If your device is low on memory, switch to a lower cache setting or turn it off alltogether. If you choose a cache setting to high, your device will run out of memory. The application is built to attempt to recover from such situations by clearing out the cache and temporarily disabling the cache. If you recieve a message about such an occurance (e.g. being dangerously low on memory) then you should reduce the cache size to improve your user experience and avoid crashes.

Widget preferences sub menu

There are three options currently supported.

Choose 'Widget update frequency' to customize how often the widget will perform an update or turn off updates all-together if you wish.

'Wake up device for updates' will allow the device to wake up, if asleep, perform the update and then go back to sleep. Note that if other processes wake up the phone and the widget is due an update it will still take advantage of the wake-up state to perform its update.

'Remove widget background' allows you to have a completely transparent widget

Unit preferences sub menu

Widgets

Move to SD Card option

The application aims to be small for its type. However, you still may have the wish to move the application to your SD card to free up internal phone storage space. To move the application to the SD card, from the home screen (not the application!) select Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage Applications. Scroll down to and click on Weather Forecast UK. Click on the 'Move to SD card'.

Please note, moving any application (including this one) to your phone's SD card disables some functionality in the application such as services or widgets. For Weather Forecast: UK, moving it to the SD card will prevent you from being able to use the included widgets. This is a restriction of the Android operating system and something which developers have no control over. However, launching the application from the icon will not behave any differently on the SD card vs internal phone storage. Only widgets are effected. If after moving to the SD card you miss the widgets functionality, you can move it back to your phone via Menu->Settings->Applicaitons->Manage Applications->Weather Forecast UK->'Move to phone'

Units

Units options are as follows: