Topic: How do you add a Weather Sticker to your Desktop on Windows 7

[Midnight Star 1]

Hello Everyone, Long time no forum but I got a little free time
I want to add the rapid fire weather sticker or the weather sticker that is on wunderground.com to my desktop
On the site they instruct you how but they do not tell you how to do it on Windows 7
I used a Vista Widget & it works but I wanted the weather sticker or rapid fire sticker on Win 7
Instruction for XP below. Anyone know how to do it on Win 7??? When you right click on Win 7 desktop you get "Personalize" but I see now "Properties" or a way to do this

How to add a Weather Sticker to your Desktop (Windows only)
1.Go to http://www.wunderground.com. In the search box at the top of the page, type in the zip code or city you would like to create a Sticker for, and click the magnifying glass.
2.On the city forecast page, scroll down and find the "Free Weather Stickers for Your Homepage!" box - it is usually below the moon phases. Click the "Get Your Weather Sticker" button.
3.Decide which Weather Sticker design you'd like to use, then click on it.
4.Instead of copying all of the code, copy only the URL for the image file. This can be found in the image source tag which starts with < img src="http... Copy the text within the tag starting with "http" and ending with the "gif".
5.For Windows XP: Right click on your desktop and click "Properties". Go to the Desktop tab, then click the "Customize Desktop..." button. Choose the Web tab, then click on the "New..." button. Paste (Ctrl+V) the URL for the Weather Sticker into the Location box, then click OK. Back in the Desktop Items window, the URL for your Weather Sticker should show with a checked box next to it. Click Apply then OK, and it should appear on your Desktop.
6.To refresh the image at any time, you can right click on it and choose "Refresh". You may need to change some settings for this Desktop item if you find that it does not update automatically. These settings can be found by clicking on the "Properties..." button in the Desktop Items window.

[longmire]

Steven,

Microsoft decided to protect us from ourselves, beginning with Vista - and eliminated the Active Desktop feature that XP used to display web pages. So the only "work-around" I have found is to download a little program called MiniBrowser (it's free) and run it. I believe it is available as either a 32-bit or 64-bit sidebar gadget for Win 7/ vista. If you want to display a flash based page, you have to run the 32-bit Sidebar.exe, since a production version of flash player is not yet available in 64-bit.

That said, Win 7 does offer the show slide show as desktop background, which I am currently using to display the Cable jpg's from my VWS and GRL3 radar images on my desktop. I have them set to display each image for 10 seconds, but you can pick from quite a range of settings. If you use the Windows Search function, you can pick and choose which images you want to display by using a saved search. I just discovered this little trick and the geek in me is now all about showing the local conditions throughtout the house   

Steve

[Midnight Star 1]

Hey Steve, Thx for the info on this. Few know about it & probably cause Win 7 is still new
I'll give it a try when I get over to my new desktop
 

[Bashy]

There is a gadget that you can use as an active desktop hope this helps, i use it to view my WDL

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=7d9c6b7c-1d5c-4736-a52e-a14dcc7f478d&bt=1&pl=1

[Midnight Star 1]

Steve,

Cant' find "show slide show as desktop background"
Can you copy & paste the path or tell me how to find it
I have looked under all the desktop items but can't locate it

[longmire]

Right click anywhere on desktop - Personalize - Desktop Background - Then at the top of the dialog box it says to select a picture to use as your desktop background - "or select more than one picture to use as a Slide Show". You can browse from there. One clever option is to first use the Win 7 Explorere Search to search for the pictures you want to include - in my case the searach was for - "br OR Cable" in my website's images subdirectory - Then - SAVE THE SEARCH - and where the first dialog offers to let you browse for pictures location, point that to your search. Win 7 treats this sved search as a sort of custom directory on the fly (not their words, just my attempt to explain), and displays the pictures you want. At the bottom of the first dialog you will find options for how long to display each picture, and whether to fill, stretch, etc. the display.

Sorry I couldn't do a screen capture of my setup from this laptop, but if you need more help - just ask!

Steve

BTW - if you select pictures from a network location, and later find that you are not connected to that network, Win 7 just displays the first image in it's Sample Pictures - in my case that lovely shot of the yellow tulips! As soon as the network connection is re-established, Win 7 begins using the images there instead.

[whetherornot]

You guys seem to be doing a lot just to get the WU sticker on your desktop.

Weather Underground already has a customizable sticker for the sidebar (accessible via the sidebar gadgets search) and in my opinion it's prettier.  It also shows more info than the stickers on the WU website.  

[WeatherHost]

^^^  I figured there had to be, I just hadn't bothered to go look for it.

http://www.wunderground.com/download/vista.asp

It states that it's for Vista, but it works in Win7.  Once installed, you can search your zip code and then select from available NOAA or PWS sites in your area.

There's also one for MACs.

http://www.wunderground.com/download/widgets.asp



MS also has several others on their site to choose from:

http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=1&pl=1&ds=2&la=en&tier=0&st=1&p=1&c=38




 

[Farmtalk]

Oh Man! That is insanium in the cranium!!!!!! Thanks!!!!

[xykotik]

Oh Man! That is insanium in the cranium!!!!!! Thanks!!!!

Careful!  Kray is looking for another $10

[xykotik]

Howdy folks.  I've been away for awhile and need to catch up on posts.  My elderly father took a fall and ended up in the hospital in Boise, which is where I have been for the past couple of weeks.  Unfortunately his already failing health caught up with him and he passed away.  Most of our family is in Central Washington State, so services concluded there yesterday.

I'm at my father-in-law's house and he wanted a "sticker" from my PWS on his Windows 7 desktop.  I finally found a super-slick and simple way to do it and want to share it with you.  It involves an add-on to external software, so if you don't like or don't want Adobe-AIR (free), this won't work for you.  It basically makes a mini-browser "snip" or "peep-hole" of any web content into a widget on your Windows 7 desktop.  I chose my wxgraphic.php default sticker.  There are no borders, bars, ads or anything on the final widget.

download from http://snippage.gabocorp.com and install.  When it opens, type or paste the URL to the webpage you want to snip.  You can use an enitre webpage, or just the contents of the img tag that you would use for your wxgraphic.php or anything else.  When the page opens, you can move/resize the snip to exactly the size/position you want.  That's it!  You can set a refresh time on the pop-up bar.

Have fun!