After adding an animated map from Weather.com into the map manager it will not show up under the wallpaper section to select it. I have experimented with other animated maps, i.e. Accuweather and so on and they work fine, but this paticular Weather.com map will not show up under the wallpaper option. I can still view it under the maps section.
Here is my image link from Weather.com:
http://image.weather.com/looper/archive … 5603222967
Try removing the “?1165603222967” portion of the URL.
BTW It’s not animated. Animated maps are usually GIFs, such as this one: http://sirocco.accuweather.com/nx_mosai … SIRMN_.gif which is found here :
Other images require sw to do the work such as Javascript, JScript or Java (which is no relation to the other two). In this case weather.com is using Javascript.
hth
Animated desktop map
Thanks for the quick reply, but I still cannot get the accuweather one that you posted here to show up under the wallpaper setting either. It shows up fine under the map tab, but not the wallpaper tab and I do have the wallpaper set up for the active desktop option.
hmmmm :???: Well I don’t use the wallpaper feature so I don’t know how helpful I’ll be.
On the Maps tab I see the Maps History and on the Wallpaper tab I see Wallpaper Images which are maps. The former relates to the WW’s Maps.ww file the latter to the MapsHistory.ww file, both of which are text files and can be manipulated with Notepad. I maintain my MapsHistory.ww file with a text editor and where I make my changes since it doesn’t get overlaid each time WW gets updated.
How are you adding maps to your system? Are you using WW’s Map Manager? Are you scrolling to the top and bottom of the list after you add a map to see if your map is there? I don’t know if WW sorts the list when adds are made to it or refreshes it. Windows Explorer doesn’t unless the window is closed/reopened or manually refreshed, WW may be similar.
Animated maps
Thanks Ed, I will have to experiment. The maps are placed in the correct alphabetal position without refreshing. I think there is just something about the animated gif files that, for some reason, is not allowed in the wallpaper section. Its not all gif’s its sparatic or selective on which ones will show up in the wallpaper manager and which don’t.
If you download/Save the map you want to be in WW to your hd and then use Windows functions to make it your wallpaper does that work? Just trying to determine if the problem is a WW problem or a Windows problem.
Animated maps
Yes, this works, but it loads as a still snapshot. Like you described earlier this is due to it being a jpg image. I have found several other animated radars that do work fine as gif’s. I think it is just the animated format that Weather.com is using that is the culprit. Wunderground is similar in there animated maps. You cannot just link to the animated map without getting the whole web page with advertising and stuff. I think more and more weather is being displayed with “Rapid Fire” or “Flash” technology. It would be great to include this in future versions of WW. I do have multiple wallpaper animated radars updating every minute. I think this was an excellent feature Mike created. My wallpaper is just four different radar and satellite maps rotating and updating every minute. Probably not good for bandwidth, but what the heck.
:iconbiggrin: WW doesn’t display the wallpapers, it is simply an interface to Windows wallpaper function. So if Windows doesn’t support the format there is nothing WW can do about it.
As to why WW isn’t listing your wallpaper entry it could be it’s ending isn’t supported, not .gif, .jpg, etc or a WW bug. And the term ending means the last 3/4 characters of the URL, thus a URL of
abc.jpg?1234’s ending is 234 which is not valid.
I see that WW’s wallpaper tab shows that Windows Active Decktop option supports HTM files as wallpaper. That being the case if your technically creative you can create HTM pages that use Javascript to display .jpg maps and add them to the wallpaper list. :thumbright: :icon_smile:
Seems like I posted code to do that for someone here a while back. 
Animated Maps
Thanks for the info. :icon_smile:
New vwersion 5.6.17 more restrictive on maps
Now I cannot get the animated maps to work under wallpaper. They won’t show up under wallpaper, but they are visible under the map manager. I even tried to restore my backup maps, but the new version is to restrictive. It still does not show up. I had to uninstall version 5.6.17 and reinstall the previous version to get my selective animated maps to show up. Also I noticed in the new version it does not allow you to choose wallpaper position and wallpaper format at the same time. The previous version allows this.
All I want to due is be able to create and select custom maps in the map manager, which does work, and have those maps visible under the wallpaper, which does not work.
My desktop background is rotating radars. I select a handfull of radar sites and have it update and rotate on a 5 minute interval.
Re: New vwersion 5.6.17 more restrictive on maps
Figured it out.
After I had more time to work with the new version I was able to get things to work. It is all related to rebooting. After the install I went back and restored my saved maps and then rebooted. Now they show up in the wallpaper area.
I disclaimer after installing to reboot would be nice.