4castr is a wildly popular weather app for Windows Phone, maintaining a 4.4 rating (out of 5) on the Store. Today, version 1.5 ‘Stratus’ has gone live, and it brings with it a massive list of changes and improvements. The app is free with in-app-purchases to unlock premium features, making it a fun option to toy around with, especially if you want detailed forecasting.
Let’s take a look at what today’s update brings. Grab a coffee, because the list in long (and we just love detailed changelogs).
4caster ‘Stratus’ 1.5 (now available)
App
- System Tray is now shown on every page
- Pages are now automatically scaled
- New Secondary Page Template
- Added option to use m/s for wind speed for metric users
- Changed “Sunrise” and “Sunset” text to icons
- Added new high wind icon
- Added code to detect wind speed and show the appropriate wind icon
- Changed water drop icon
- Improvements to how data is processed and displayed
- Optimized 4castr logo
- Improved app load time
- Now supports fast app resume
- General UI Tweaks
- General speed improvements
Main Page
- Redesigned entire page
- Developed new gesture methods and optimized animations
- Panels now move and follow through to reflect gestures
- Header and navigation dots disappear when panel is about to overlap during gesture
- Added “pull to refresh” gesture to the Current Panel
- Created “pull to refresh” to “release to refresh” animation
- Added pressure trend arrow
- Redesigned alert preview box into a user control
- Alert preview box now shows alert issue and expire times
- Redesigned alert view overlay
- Improvements to how alert text is displayed
- Added “read this alert” feature
- Added alert open & close animations
- Added alert selection and alert back key press animations
- Multiple alert list improvements
- Forecasted temperature (high and low) now scale based on length
- Swiping left and right now works within the forecast text scroll viewer
- Redesigned glance forecast items into user controls
- Added tilt effect to glance forecast items
- Added Wind Chill to hourly forecast
- Added Heat Index to hourly forecast
- Swiping left and right now works within the hourly forecast list
- Fixed radar legend to reflect actual Weather Underground radar colors
- Fixed several animated radar bugs and improved load time
- Improvements to application bar
- Improvements to “share weather”
Add Location Page
- Redesigned entire page
- New clean & simple “Allow GPS” prompt
- GPS is now the preferred method for locations
- Added deny animation
- Fixed location search box bugs
- Redesigned location list item template
- Location results now show full location, type, latitude, longitude, and ID
- Improvements to navigation model
Customize Icons Page
- Redesigned entire page
- Added four new icon packs (seven total)
- Rewrote determine icon code to reflect actual weather underground condition documentation
- Fixed select custom icon bugs
- Icons are now stored as two resolutions
Voice Command Page
- Fixed scaling issues
- Replaced five day forecast with full ten day forecast
- Added “close app after voice command response” feature
- Background Agent:
- Added option to change run interval (hourly, every 2 hours, or every 4 hours)
- Added manual background agent reschedule button
- Rewrote download weather code
- Rewrote render and update tile code
Live Tiles
- Redesigned all live tiles into user controls and adjusted margins
- Added support for Windows Phone 8.1 Transparent Tiles
- Fixed high contrast bug
- Rewrote live tile render code
- Rewrote live tile update code
- Better rendering memory management
- Tile Settings are now saved as custom data type
Alert Toast Notifications
- Rewrote alert toast code
- Replaced old custom sound with new customize sound options
- Option to use chime + alert title announcement
- Alert titles can be read by Redd Horrocks (in American or British accents)
- Voice accent is determined by region, however can be changed in settings
That’s a lot of changes and Windows Phone 8.1 early adopters will like the new transparent Tile option. There are so many changes that we left a few of the deeper ones off this page, but you can head to developer Bailey Stein’s blog to read more about the update here.
Needless to say, we like it when developers pay attention to their apps and user requests. While 4castr may be too much for some users, we know a lot of you will enjoy the new features and overall UI improvements, including better gesture controls. I’ve been beta testing it for a few days and appreciate the changes.
Want to give it a spin? Version 1.5 is now live in the Store and worth the download. The app is free, but by going Pro ($1.99, in-app-purchase) you get Live tile support, customizable weather icons, alert Toast notifications and 16 app themes.
Grab it here. Windows Phone 8/8.1 only
