It is currently March 28th, 2024, 1:28 pm

Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post reviews, recommendations and questions about other software.
Julian A Smith
Posts: 4
Joined: June 10th, 2018, 5:43 pm

Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by Julian A Smith »

Hello to the forum and thank you in advance for your welcome. It is because of my pursuit to renew, or in some cases, re-activate the long discontinued Yahoo! widgets that I've ended up here at Rainmeter. Several other forum members have been at work at this site to reconstitute the beloved Yahoo! weather widget, with some experiencing good success at it. Therefore, I am here to implore anyone who may be able to help, to help reconstitute another Yahoo! widget and that one is the Yahoo! Earthquake widget. I've contacted the usgs.gov to ask if they have changed their RSS format or made any significant changes and they claim they haven't made any. They are still sending out real-time earthquake information. Someone that I've been in touch with over at Donation Coder (will code for food) actually fixed the Yahoo! weather widget and was kind enough to provide a simple download link which provided the fix. I asked her If she would be willing to take a look at the earthquake widget and she politely declined so I'm here to seek help in restoring/preserving the earthquake widget. It's really (was) a great little widget so please, can anyone help?
User avatar
eclectic-tech
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 5380
Joined: April 12th, 2012, 9:40 pm
Location: Cedar Point, Ohio, USA
Contact:

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by eclectic-tech »

Do you have any information on the Yahoo version, a screenshot, old code, or a detailed description?

EarthquakeMap by Brian is about the only working earthquake Rainmeter skin I am aware of, but I have no idea if it is anything like the old Yahoo widget.
User avatar
SilverAzide
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 2588
Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 5:26 pm
Contact:

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by SilverAzide »

There is an Earthquake gadget here too: Gadgets Additions
User avatar
eclectic-tech
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 5380
Joined: April 12th, 2012, 9:40 pm
Location: Cedar Point, Ohio, USA
Contact:

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by eclectic-tech »

SilverAzide wrote:There is an Earthquake gadget here too: Gadgets Additions
That shows how little I know ;-)
Thanks for sharing! :thumbup:
Julian A Smith
Posts: 4
Joined: June 10th, 2018, 5:43 pm

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by Julian A Smith »

(1) https://github.com/ghewgill/quake-widget/commit/d3e5e2ffd566a141413d310a6a7344bac41e0bc9?short_path=1f290d6#diff-1f290d620cbb02a2d1223ff7ec34632b (2) https://github.com/ghewgill/quake-widget/blob/5b8b23d0ee3dcd598892e11d34ea2355e25500f3/script.js (3) https://github.com/ghewgill/quake-widget/commit/d3e5e2ffd566a141413d310a6a7344bac41e0bc9?short_path=1f290d6#diff-1f290d620cbb02a2d1223ff7ec34632b

Dear eclectic-tech,
Thank you for replying to my post; I have posted the urls where the code(s), revisions, and updates to the usgs.gov widget feeds may be found. Also, the urls contain some screen-shots of the original images of the widget; I have included the url of the site where the original Yahoo! Konfabulator widget engine may be safely downloaded -- https://rickyromero.com/widgets/

Thank you deeply for your help. Julian A Smith
User avatar
eclectic-tech
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 5380
Joined: April 12th, 2012, 9:40 pm
Location: Cedar Point, Ohio, USA
Contact:

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by eclectic-tech »

Julian A Smith wrote:(1) https://github.com/ghewgill/quake-widget/commit/d3e5e2ffd566a141413d310a6a7344bac41e0bc9?short_path=1f290d6#diff-1f290d620cbb02a2d1223ff7ec34632b (2) https://github.com/ghewgill/quake-widget/blob/5b8b23d0ee3dcd598892e11d34ea2355e25500f3/script.js (3) https://github.com/ghewgill/quake-widget/commit/d3e5e2ffd566a141413d310a6a7344bac41e0bc9?short_path=1f290d6#diff-1f290d620cbb02a2d1223ff7ec34632b

Dear eclectic-tech,
Thank you for replying to my post; I have posted the urls where the code(s), revisions, and updates to the usgs.gov widget feeds may be found. Also, the urls contain some screen-shots of the original images of the widget; I have included the url of the site where the original Yahoo! Konfabulator widget engine may be safely downloaded -- https://rickyromero.com/widgets/

Thank you deeply for your help. Julian A Smith
Thanks for the links, Julian! And sorry for the delayed reply...

From what I can see in those links, this was similar in appearance to the Earthquake Map by Brian that I referenced above. I made some changes to his skin and released version 3 (in that same thread), which does earthquakes and disasters reports based on end user selections. It may be different from the original widget in function, but will provide the data from the same USGS site and Pacific Disaster Center site.

For that reason, I would recommend modifying that skin to work as similarly as the old widget as you can, rather than create an entirely new skin. :uhuh:
User avatar
SilverAzide
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 2588
Joined: March 23rd, 2015, 5:26 pm
Contact:

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by SilverAzide »

eclectic-tech wrote:Thanks for the links, Julian! And sorry for the delayed reply...

From what I can see in those links, this was similar in appearance to the Earthquake Map by Brian that I referenced above. I made some changes to his skin and released version 3 (in that same thread), which does earthquakes and disasters reports based on end user selections. It may be different from the original widget in function, but will provide the data from the same USGS site and Pacific Disaster Center site.

For that reason, I would recommend modifying that skin to work as similarly as the old widget as you can, rather than create an entirely new skin. :uhuh:
Personally, I just visit the forums to see what the latest outfit eclectic-tech's little penguin avatar is wearing, but that's just me...
User avatar
balala
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 16109
Joined: October 11th, 2010, 6:27 pm
Location: Gheorgheni, Romania

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by balala »

SilverAzide wrote:Personally, I just visit the forums to see what the latest outfit eclectic-tech's little penguin avatar is wearing, but that's just me...
And me too. Congratulations for him, to those penguins, they are great. All of them.
User avatar
eclectic-tech
Rainmeter Sage
Posts: 5380
Joined: April 12th, 2012, 9:40 pm
Location: Cedar Point, Ohio, USA
Contact:

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by eclectic-tech »

SilverAzide wrote:Personally, I just visit the forums to see what the latest outfit eclectic-tech's little penguin avatar is wearing, but that's just me...
Happy to keep you all entertained! :17nodding

Feeling a bit transparent for now...
Julian A Smith
Posts: 4
Joined: June 10th, 2018, 5:43 pm

Re: Repair Of Another Once-Great Yahoo! Widget

Post by Julian A Smith »

Dear eclectic-tech,

Thank you for locating an actual working, real-time feed, website widget. Brian's widget is a wonderful work and it has far more information available than the Yahoo! widget, though it does take-up a bit of on-screen real estate. I hope you don't think me unappreciative of your trying to point me in the best direction in keeping with the request I made concerning the Yahoo! widget but I really am looking to try to repair the Yahoo! Konfabulator earthquake widget. I wish you would download the original widget from the (safe) link I provided and take a look at it; it's a very (comparatively) small version of the "world map' (3.5" x 1.8") and it's rather elegant and it can be positioned to sit unobtrusively on the screen. Lately, when it loads during boot-up it flashes a brief "Loading Data" in white lettering; this flashes about three or four more times and then, in the lower two-thirds of the widget, a message in red lettering reads: "unable to load data from usgs.gov". I believe strongly that the fix is probably a simple one, and that would be to update the usgs.gov feed link on the appropriate line in the open source code but I have no idea how to do it. I mentioned in my earlier original post that a kind person over at Donation Coder provided a fix for the Yahoo! weather widget. She fixed it for herself but was kind enough to make her fix available to everyone who wanted to see their own copy of the Yahoo! weather widget functioning again. Here's her response: "I am glad you can enjoy the weather widget again. It's my favorite of all weather widgets, including any that I can stick on my phone. :)


To fix the weather widget, I had to do quite a bit of googling to find out what the problem was (weeks of searching). I finally found a hint at a possible solution on some forum, related to some other widget application, that also used Yahoo Weather's feed, which also was not working. It contained a way to fix that application and I decided to try it with the weather widget.

Then I had to find out how to decompile and recompile a Yahoo widget, which requires another widget that wasn't easy for me to find.

Once I decompiled it and was able to see the broken widget's code, I could see that it was pointing to a Yahoo URL that no longer worked. Since Yahoo previously had just been republishing the feed from weather.com, I changed it to the equivalent URL on weather.com's servers, removing Yahoo from the widget.

Then I just recompiled it and thankfully, it worked. I really wasn't sure if it would work, at the time, but I am glad that it did.

Unfortunately, I am not familiar at all with the Earthquake widget, and widget development isn't really my hobby. I only fixed the weather one because the problem was an easy one to fix, and I really needed to get it working again for myself. It sounds like the Earthquake widget might be a lot of work. Perhaps that's why the original developer got angry.

If you want to make a donation to me, it would be greatly appreciated. There are 3 different ways you can donate. Just pick the one you are most comfortable with." ( I did donate to her.) So, eclectic-tech, is there anything else you can do? Thanks.
Post Reply