Hacking Weather Widget Hacking

John Gruber just posted a great article on how to take the Weather Dashboard widget in Tiger and hack it to add a “last updated” time.  It’s not only useful, but it’s also a wonderful introduction to the simplicity of widgets.  If you can hack on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript—as I expect most visitors to this site can—then you can alter or create a Dashboard widget.

However, there was one thing I didn’t like about John’s hack: he converted the 24-hour time already stored by the widget into 12-hour AM/PM time.  I prefer 24-hour time, as do most people outside the United States (which I am not, but never mind that now), and sticking to 24-hour time makes the script addition even simpler.  So here’s my quick modification of John’s JavaScript to result in a time like “1450” instead of “2:50 pm” or “0307” instead of “3:07 am”.

// Format the time of the last data refresh
var h = object.time.hour;
var m = object.time.minute;
if (h < 10) {
   h = '0' + h;
}
if (m < 10) {
   m = '0' + m;
}
document.getElementById('updatetime').innerText =
   h + m;

Other than that, do everything just like John says to do.  Share and enjoy!

• Hacking Weather Widget Hacking was published on Monday, June 27th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Mac category.
• There have been five replies.