If you just stumbled upon MinimalWeather.com you would probably think it is just your average weather site. The kind of site that simply tells you the current weather and temperature from your location. If you look under the covers however, and really get down to the bottom of MinimalWeather.com then you will realize it is more than meets the eye .
When viewing the website on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad you will be prompt to add the website to your iOS device’s SpringBoard (home screen). If you decide to do this the icon that is added to your SpringBoard will reflect the current weather condition since the last time you checked the website. As such MinimalWeather.com brings a semi-automatic live weather icon to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
The developer of this MinimalWeather hack originally based his website on HTML5 and javascript technologies. As for determining the weather condition and rendering the whole thing browser geolocation, the canvas element and pretty typography was used. Unfortunately this method proved to be not reliable due to slow rendering times that often times caused certain UI elements not to be displayed. Thus a tiny Cuba app was born with cool typography, IP to location and SVG technology and much more was used to create a great user experience. The actual icon itself gets generation thanks to a special favicon that Apple provides”rel=’apple-touch-icon’.” As the icon gets read every time the app gets loaded it becomes easy to generate a new icon and update the old one thanks to MobileSafari supporting data-url content.
If you would like to get a semi-live weather icon on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad then simply visit the MinimalWeather website and add it to your home screen. Now whenever you visit the website you will find the icon updates itself to the current weather condition at your location. Cool huh?
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