Weather v2.0

Recently I updated the Microsoft Weather app to take advantage of new Windows Phone 7.5 features like background agents, secondary tiles, and FAS.  The update hit the Marketplace today.

In addition to having new features, this version was architected from the ground up for performance following many of the guidelines I call out in my recent blog post Optimizing Apps for Lower Cost Devices.

I encourage you to follow the same performance/UX principles demonstrated by this new Weather update.  Following these principles will ensure your apps perform great regardless of the device.

Hope you like the new update and have fun building for Windows Phone!

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2012
  I've tried deleting and updating the Weather app 3 times from the marketplace but it's still downloading ver 1.0. I have Windows Phone 7.5 on a Noklia Lumia on O2

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2012
  Same here. Updated and Uninstalled / re-install weather. Only shows v1 even though MP says v2.  Have a Trophy on VZW.

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2012
  (This comment has been deleted per user request)

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2012
  Thanks Mike, yes I can pin locations to start (and yes it still says ver 1.0.0.0). I think I was also confused as in MP the app 'icon' is black but when installed on the phone it's blue (just like ver 1). Anyway thanks very much for the update to the App!

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2012
  (This comment has been deleted per user request)

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2012
  All fixed in your new 2.1 release, thanks!

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2012
  Is there a reason the weather app generates a live tile with a solid theme-color background, rather than a transparent one? I've gone for the latter approach with my app and it results in the tile automatically changing background color when the user changes theme (without having to regenerate the tile).

• Anonymous
  April 12, 2012
  (This comment has been deleted per user request)

• Anonymous
  April 14, 2012
  @Mike - I've run into the same issues (in that the PNG libraries I'm using don't result in the same quality as the built in JPG libraries), so I might follow suit. It would be nice if PNG support were built in to a future version of the framework (pre-Apollo timeframe, obviously).

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2012
  I've installed your updated weather app on my Lumia 610, but I can't get the live tiles to work :( I read here and other places that say the new version is re-written to support lower cost devices. Can you let me know if I am doing something wrong, or if that support doesn't actually extend to live tiles. As for what I know Lumia 610 can support live tiles, but not background agents, so updates have to be done with push notification style updates? Would like to know your thoughts / opinions. So far I am enjoying the Lumia 610, but a live weather tile would really make the experience better and more comparable to low cost Android devices ;) Regards, Nic

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2012
  (This comment has been deleted per user request)

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2012
  Thanks a lot for the reply Mike, it certianly clears things up. You metion there are several apps in the Marketplace that offer live tiles via push notifications, I've tried quite a few in my quest to find something that can offer me this on the 610, but haven't found one that works yet :( I suspect that perhaps a lot of the weather apps have gone down the route of background agents... But if you have any recommendations, apart from your own app of course :) I'd be interested to know which apps can actually provide an updating live tile on the 610. Regards, Nic

• Anonymous
  June 13, 2012
  (This comment has been deleted per user request)

• Anonymous
  June 13, 2012
  Great post Mike, thank you for being so helpful. With all your insight into the work that has been done for mid-tier devices (Lumia 610) maybe it would be worth a dedicated blog post on information like this for others. I know it can get easily lost buried in comments.