Spb Weather is a program for dislpaying weather information on the Today screen. Its look and feel can be customized using skins. This document describes how to create custom skins for Spb Weather.
In a few words an Spb Weather skin is a set of icons for different sky states (sunny, cloudy,
rainy, snowy, etc). Each icon should be of three sizes: 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64. Here are some
different weather views that show in which cases these 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64 icons are used:
16x16:
32x32:
64x64 (VGA Only)
Skin Files
Actually, an Spb Weather skin consists of 3 bitmap images. Each image contains the whole icon
set for one particular size (16x16, 32x32, and 64x64 pixels).
Each image is logically split into two parts. One part is an image itself, and the other part is
the alpha channel. The alpha channel defines a transparency mask used to put images on
the background. A lighter pixel in the alpha channel corresponds to a less transparent pixel
on the final image. Thus, a white pixel of the alpha channel means that a corresponding pixel in the
final image won't
be transparent at all. A black pixel means that a corresponding pixel in the final image will be
100% transparent (and we will see the background under it).
All pixels of the alpha channel part must be of gray scale only (the same values for all three color
components: e.g. #333333), excluding a separating pixel that marks the very last pixel of the
image with color #00FFFF (see samples).
Icon Description
Each icon in the file corresponds to one sky state. The following table describes these states:
1
WEATHER_UNKNOWN
2
VERY_HOT
3
SUNNY (Clear sky)
4
PARTLY_CLOUDY
5
CLOUDY
6
HEAVY_CLOUDY
7
SMOKE
8
LIGHT_RAIN
9
HEAVY_RAIN
10
RAIN_WITH_SNOW
11
LIGHT_SNOW
12
HEAVY_SNOW
13
BLIZZARD
14
THUNDERSTORM
15
SUNNY_WITH_RAIN
16
SUNNY_WITH_THUNDERSTORM
17
SUNNY_WITH_SNOW
18
NIGHT_CLEAR
19
NIGHT_PARTLY_CLOUDY
20
NIGHT_CLOUDY
21
NIGHT_HARDLY_CLOUDY
22
NIGHT_SMALL_RAIN
23
NIGHT_HARD_RAIN
24
NIGHT_RAIN_WITH_SNOW
25
NIGHT_SMALL_SNOW
26
NIGHT_HARD_SNOW
27
NIGHT_BLIZZARD
28
NIGHT_THUNDERSTORM
29
NIGHT_WITH_RAIN
30
NIGHT_WITH_THUNDERSTORM
31
NIGHT_WITH_SNOW
Testing the Skin
[To be supplied.]
Building a Skin Installation Program
After you have created these 3 bitmap pictures (16_16.bmp, 32_32.bmp and 64_64.bmp) you are ready to
build a skin installer (a desktop PC program that will install the skin on your Pocket PC).
Please note that the skin installer builder works only on Windows 2000/XP (it does not work on Windows 9x).
Unzip SpbWeatherSkinBuilder.zip to a custom folder
Substitute 16_16.bmp, 32_32.bmp and 64_64.bmp files with your newly created bitmap files
Open the build.bat file for editing (for example in Notepad)
In the following line of this file: SET SKINNAME=Blue
substitute "Blue" with your custom skin name. Please note that a skin name should
contain no spaces.
Save the build.bat file and run it
A new {YourSkinName}__SpbWeatherSkin_setup.exe file will be created in the same folder
Support/Contact Us
If you have any questions about creating skins for Spb Weather please do not hesitate
to contact Spb Weather Support.