So I’ve been playing with the little weather indicator in the sidebar of the blog. I’ve used Wunderground for a long time, but now I’m also trying WeatherForYou (BD uses it on his site). Both of the indicators I have right now give a graphical representation of the weather, which is something I like. The Wunderground one is the only one with that feature that will fit
in the space of all the others they have, but I find it too busy (and the time-of-sample too obtrusive). The Wx4u one is better, but I’m not 100% happy with it, either.
We’ll see.
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Wunderground kept blowing up on me, which is why I went to WeatherForYou.
Never had a problem with it blowing up on me. I just find too many of the buttons difficult to read, ugly, or with oversized logos/names.
AccuWeather has one nice small weather sticker — but (a) it will only display “Englewood” (bzzzt!), and (b) it’s Flash-based (double-bzzzt, first off because it’s unnecessary, secondly because I have FlashBlock on my browser and it won’t auto-allow embedded Flash from another site.
The Weather Channel also has stickers, but they’re all HUUUUUUUUGE! Jeez.
SuperPages, on the other hand, is both ugly and only gives forecasts, not current conditions. Weatherbug is another site that loves HUUUUUUGE stickers; it’s smaller ones have the ZIP code, which I’d rather avoid, to be honest.
Well … I tried Weatherbug — it’s way too fancy an installation (inlcuding CSS and divs and all that). Messed things up to pieces. Bleah.
DynaWeather is another option, with limited alternatives but customizable. It’s not quite right, and I worry a bit about it being a small (and throttled) service.
As a general observation, I want something no bigger than 200×200, that shows the current temp (in a largish text), that shows the a graphic of the current conditions, and that, if it shows the city name, shows “Centennial” rather than “Englewood.” Some sites are finally starting to give Centennial as an option (as distinct from Englewood, which is what my ZIP usually produces, and Denver Centennial Airport (KAPA), which also works for us).
(Good list to sift through here.)
FindLocalWeather is another decent source with a variety of buttons. But too much of the info is (to my eye) difficult to spot (e.g., the temp). I’m going to try it anyway.
Well, I like the “weather for you” indicator the best. It give most of the info in a readable font with a jaunty little icon. I dislike the font that is used in the “find local weather” indicator, and the weather underground indicator is just to busy for my tastes. Not that this much matters since I don’t have much concern for the weather in CO.
I tend to agree re the WUnderground one. Still considering.
Just to clarify — can you re-comment based on the “letters” I’ve put next to them?
I choose A.