Summary

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.

Getting Started

First download Spb Weather program from Spb website:
http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/weather/download.html

Here are a few samples of Spb Weather skins:

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).

To build a skin installation program:

1. Download SpbWeatherSkinBuilder.zip
2. Unzip SpbWeatherSkinBuilder.zip to a custom folder
3. Substitute 16_16.bmp, 32_32.bmp and 64_64.bmp files with your newly created bitmap files
4. Open the build.bat file for editing (for example in Notepad)
5. 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.
6. Save the build.bat file and run it
7. 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.