[Solved:] A _simple_ weather skin, that works well for the U.K, or else a decent tutorial?

[jn_meter]

Thanks, SilverAzide.

@xenium (and if I may): is it normal for the display to be as follows (with those horizontal bars)?



(The current time is near midnight, if that matters.)

[SilverAzide]

@xenium (and if I may): is it normal for the display to be as follows (with those horizontal bars)?

Maybe... is it foggy out? Maybe that's the icon for fog?

[xenium]

Thanks, SilverAzide.

@xenium (and if I may): is it normal for the display to be as follows (with those horizontal bars)?



(The current time is near midnight, if that matters.)

As SilverAzide also said, it is the icon for fog.
Place the mouse cursor over the weather icon and you will have details about the current weather.

[jn_meter]

Again: thanks to you both.

I submit that an image of horizontal bars is an unintuitive way of denoting fog. It seems to me that a natural interpretation of the icon is that some data is missing (!). For, compare the image (/text) about which I inquired before, namely, '---'.

[SilverAzide]

Again: thanks to you both.

I submit that an image of horizontal bars is an unintuitive way of denoting fog. It seems to me that a natural interpretation of the icon is that some data is missing (!). For, compare the image (/text) about which I inquired before, namely, '---'.

Your quote above is the key to using Rainmeter, so congratulations for discovering it!

You are now at the exact point where YOU get to decide how you want to skin to work, and YOU change the code and the icons to work the way YOU want and not the way someone else wants. Xenium has done all the hard work, the rest is up to you. Now the fun begins! Enjoy!

(Xenium has lots of other weather skins with different icon styles, so it is simple to mix and match to find a set you like better. There are even "icon packs" on DeviantArt and elsewhere you can use to substitute with the ones in the skin.)

[jn_meter]

@xenium and, somewhat @SilverAzide

I wonder whether, in the 'Weather Desk' skin, there is good reason for [WEATHER.COMSuperParent] -> UpdateRate to have its (low!) value of 600. Having found that Rainmeter's CPU usage increased a little after I installed the Weather Desk, I am experimenting with setting that value to 12000 (!). However: since I do not (at least yet) at all understand the relevant code, I may be making a mistake!

[SilverAzide]

@xenium and, somewhat @SilverAzide

I wonder whether, in the 'Weather Desk' skin, there is good reason for [WEATHER.COMSuperParent] -> UpdateRate to have its (low!) value of 600. Having found that Rainmeter's CPU usage increased a little after I installed the Weather Desk, I am experimenting with setting that value to 12000 (!). However: since I do not (at least yet) at all understand the relevant code, I may be making a mistake!

In this particular case, the "600" is 600 seconds (10 minutes), not 600 milliseconds (in other words, don't confuse the update rate of a WebParser measure with the update rate of the entire skin). To be precise, the update rate of the WebParser measure is 600 times the update rate of the skin, which is in this case is 1 second. See the docs on UpdateRate.

The Weather Channel (weather.com) updates their data at roughly 10 minute intervals (sometimes 15 or so). So fetching the website data at a rate of anything less than 10 minutes might be considered unnecessary. Setting it to some very low value (like less than a minute) is a great way to get your IP address banned for a time, so avoid doing that! Setting it to a longer interval than 10 minutes is a judgement call. If your weather skin does not show current conditions (like if it just shows the current forecast, which is a different data set that is not updated as frequently) then a longer interval might be OK. However, if your skin does show current conditions, then you'll want to choose an interval that more closely matches weather.com's native update rate.