Customizable PIM on your desktop wallpaper

Requirement

• Active Desktop Calendar 6.5 or later
• Weather forecast feed in iCal format

Make it work

Active Desktop Calendar's feature that allows connecting to a web based calendar layer may also be used to deliver up-to-date weather information directly to the desktop providing there is a weather service web site that keeps such information available in iCal format. One such feed is offered at Weather Underground's web site and we will now show you how to include its weather forecast in your own calendar:

• point your browser to The Weather Underground
• use the web site's search box to find weather page for your designated location
• right click on the ICAL icon (last time we checked it was green and placed to the right of the location name) and choose Copy Shortcut option
• now right click on Active Desktop Calendar's date icon in the taskbar area next to the system clock and choose Layers
• click on "Add Web layer" button
• type in some name into "Web layer name" box
• paste the link you copied from Weather Underground into "Web ICAL address" box and click Ok.

Important to know Like all web based calendar layers Weather Underground's forecast data are read-only and kept in a separate data layer marked with suffix "[WEB]" in the list of layers. You will not be able to relocate, rename and clear data in this special layer. You can only disable it in the list or remove completely. If you keep the mouse pointer over the layer name for a couple of seconds you will see the last successful refresh date and time information in a tooltip. Internet connection Obviously Active Desktop Calendar has to use your Internet connection to get data from web based calendar layers so if you have some firewall make sure it is configured properly to allow that activity.

Internet layer options By default, all web based layers are refreshed every 60 minutes with additional options of 10 minutes and 5 hours. To change the refresh interval right click on the program's date icon in the taskbar, choose Settings, select Notes/Tasks Options tab and look for Internet Layer Options section. This setting automatically applies to all web based layers you have.