Silverlight Virtual Earth World Clock

Source code checked in, #99885

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Source code checked in, #99884

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Source code checked in, #74794

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Checked in by server upgrade

Reviewed: SilverTime v0.000001 (六月 06, 2010)

forrestzhang — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 07:48:55 GMT

Rated 5 Stars (out of 5) - like Silverlight

Updated Wiki: Home

ShawnSte — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:19:08 GMT

Help Wanted

Project Description
This is a world clock using Virtual Earth for the world clock. It uses Silverlight and Virtual Earth through the VIEWS wrapper (also a codeplex project). Originally it was created as a simple, but flashy :) demo of Silverlight for global aware apps.

Details
SilverTime is an example of a Silverlight application. Initially it was intended to be a quickly written demo for a presentation, with a global aspect. The VIEWS Virtual Earth Silverlight wrapper was chosen because it made it easy to get a map and reasonable latitude/longitude coordinates from that map. Besides its really cool, and extreme overkill for a world clock :)

Dependencies

Silverlight Beta 2 is the first dependency http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
The VIEWS Virtual Earth Wrapper for Silverlight http://www.codeplex.com/views codeplex project is another.
And that uses Virtual Earth http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429619.aspx
Clock data came from the tz (olson) database http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo

Serious Bugs
This was intended for flashiness, but I ran out of time to make the daylight savings times behave properly:

Daylight savings times are recognized, but the transition between daylight and standard time (and vice versa) is very inaccurate. DO NOT USE.
I didn't really parse the data for the transition very well.
I used the Pythagorean theorem to figure out how far from a timezone point a click is.
- This doesn't account for the fact that the earth is round, so some points are "closer" in real life, even though the latitude is way different.
- This only gets you the closest city. So if you click somewhere that in real life is within a time zone, but the closest known city is in another, you'll get inaccurate results (except that the city name may help you catch the error).

Things that'd be cool to do
Again, I didn't do everything that'd be cool

It'd be nice to have better timezone regions, and perhaps the UTC+/- timezones for places in the middle of an ocean or otherwise lacking a nearby city.
Highlighting the found city/point would be cool.
Bird's Eye view for the found point would be fun.
Comparing multiple locations would be fun.
Etc., etc. etc.
The tz data includes city/timezone latitude and longitude information.

Making it work

Silverlight Virtual Earth World Clock

To just run it:

Install Silverlight Beta 2 Runtime http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Download the release and unzip it locally.
Open WorldClock.html

or to get the source project

Install Visual Studio and Silverlight Tools Beta 2 (not just the runtime) http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Download the project from the source code tab
Unzip, open the project, Build & Run.

Updating the Project

You can grab new bits from the VIEWS project when its available (2 dlls and a .js file)
You can grab the latest tz database. That's a bit more of a pain because it needs to be ported into the format of the data.cs file.

Updated Wiki: Home

ShawnSte — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:18:48 GMT

Help Wanted
test

Project Description
This is a world clock using Virtual Earth for the world clock. It uses Silverlight and Virtual Earth through the VIEWS wrapper (also a codeplex project). Originally it was created as a simple, but flashy :) demo of Silverlight for global aware apps.

Details
SilverTime is an example of a Silverlight application. Initially it was intended to be a quickly written demo for a presentation, with a global aspect. The VIEWS Virtual Earth Silverlight wrapper was chosen because it made it easy to get a map and reasonable latitude/longitude coordinates from that map. Besides its really cool, and extreme overkill for a world clock :)

Dependencies

Silverlight Beta 2 is the first dependency http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
The VIEWS Virtual Earth Wrapper for Silverlight http://www.codeplex.com/views codeplex project is another.
And that uses Virtual Earth http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429619.aspx
Clock data came from the tz (olson) database http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo

Serious Bugs
This was intended for flashiness, but I ran out of time to make the daylight savings times behave properly:

Daylight savings times are recognized, but the transition between daylight and standard time (and vice versa) is very inaccurate. DO NOT USE.
I didn't really parse the data for the transition very well.
I used the Pythagorean theorem to figure out how far from a timezone point a click is.
- This doesn't account for the fact that the earth is round, so some points are "closer" in real life, even though the latitude is way different.
- This only gets you the closest city. So if you click somewhere that in real life is within a time zone, but the closest known city is in another, you'll get inaccurate results (except that the city name may help you catch the error).

Things that'd be cool to do
Again, I didn't do everything that'd be cool

It'd be nice to have better timezone regions, and perhaps the UTC+/- timezones for places in the middle of an ocean or otherwise lacking a nearby city.
Highlighting the found city/point would be cool.
Bird's Eye view for the found point would be fun.
Comparing multiple locations would be fun.
Etc., etc. etc.
The tz data includes city/timezone latitude and longitude information.

Making it work

Silverlight Virtual Earth World Clock

To just run it:

Install Silverlight Beta 2 Runtime http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Download the release and unzip it locally.
Open WorldClock.html

or to get the source project

Install Visual Studio and Silverlight Tools Beta 2 (not just the runtime) http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Download the project from the source code tab
Unzip, open the project, Build & Run.

Updating the Project

You can grab new bits from the VIEWS project when its available (2 dlls and a .js file)
You can grab the latest tz database. That's a bit more of a pain because it needs to be ported into the format of the data.cs file.

New Post: Use DeepEarth instead of wrapper?

ShawnSte — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:54:46 GMT

I'm not sure what advantage that is over the VIEWS http://www.codeplex.com/views wrapper... You can always join the project :)

New Post: Use DeepEarth instead of wrapper?

soulsolutions — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:53:36 GMT

We have a native SL control for Virtual Earth here on codeplex:
http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth

I think we could make this a lot easier for by taking care of the accurate polygon drawing, control is a neat 70KB as we use the built in MSI control. I'll let you know when we do a release, tring to get an infinate horizontal panning going currently that would allow you to centre on any location.

Updated Wiki: Home

ShawnSte — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:25:47 GMT

Silverlight Beta 2 is the first dependency http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
The VIEWS Virtual Earth Wrapper for Silverlight http://www.codeplex.com/views codeplex project is another.
And that uses Virtual Earth http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429619.aspx
Clock data came from the tz (olson) database http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo

Serious Bugs
This was intended for flashiness, but I ran out of time to make the daylight savings times behave properly:

Daylight savings times are recognized, but the transition between daylight and standard time (and vice versa) is very inaccurate. DO NOT USE.
I didn't really parse the data for the transition very well.
I used the Pythagorean theorem to figure out how far from a timezone point a click is.

This doesn't account for the fact that the earth is round, so some points are "closer" in real life, even though the latitude is way different.
This only gets you the closest city. So if you click somewhere that in real life is within a time zone, but the closest known city is in another, you'll get inaccurate results (except that the city name may help you catch the error).

Things that'd be cool to do
Again, I didn't do everything that'd be cool

It'd be nice to have better timezone regions, and perhaps the UTC+/- timezones for places in the middle of an ocean or otherwise lacking a nearby city.
Highlighting the found city/point would be cool.
Bird's Eye view for the found point would be fun.
Comparing multiple locations would be fun.
Etc., etc. etc.
The tz data includes city/timezone latitude and longitude information.

Making it work

Silverlight Virtual Earth World Clock

To just run it:

Install Silverlight Beta 2 Runtime http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Download the release and unzip it locally.
Open WorldClock.html

or to get the source project

Install Visual Studio and Silverlight Tools Beta 2 (not just the runtime) http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Download the project from the source code tab
Unzip, open the project, Build & Run.

Updating the Project

You can grab new bits from the VIEWS project when its available (2 dlls and a .js file)
You can grab the latest tz database. That's a bit more of a pain because it needs to be ported into the format of the data.cs file.

New Post: Help Wanted :)

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:22:09 GMT

Let me know if you want to help out with this project. As noted its very rough right now, just a quick sample I whipped up for a demo. The idea has lots of potential though.

New Post: Help Wanted :)

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:22:09 GMT

Let me know if you want to help out with this project. As noted its very rough right now, just a quick sample I whipped up for a demo. The idea has lots of potential though.

Released: SilverTime v0.000001 (Aug 13, 2008)

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:19:03 GMT

WARNING: This is still a really buggy v0.1 version, particularly around DST transitions.

This is (I think) the minimal set of files needed to run the clock. Install Silverlight (Beta 2), extract the files, and then open WorldClock.html.

Created Release: SilverTime v0.000001 (Aug 13, 2008)

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:19:03 GMT

Source code checked in, #35750

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:35:05 GMT

Initial Checkin

Created Issue: Need a parser to get the tz data into the data.cs (or better) format

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:51:08 GMT

Right now the project doesn't include a parser for the tz data.

Created Issue: Many places are "missing" (sort of)

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:40:12 GMT

The tz database doesn't include all cities (of course). So Seattle, for example, is missing. It might be nice to find a way to report the actual city the user clicked (if we can ensure it is in a correct time zone region).

Created Issue: Lots of data was skipped

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:39:08 GMT

Lots of the tz data was skipped. It may be worth checking to see if there is a way to get more of the data imported.

Created Issue: Pythagorean theorem doesn't do a good job of "closeness"

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:37:33 GMT

Need to map the closeness technique to a round object, the Pythagorean theorem doesn't apply to the Earth's latitude/longitude system.

Created Issue: Daylight Savings Time transitions are really error prone.

ShawnSte — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:36:37 GMT

The Daylight Savings time transitions are really error prone (we're talking weeks, not hours). Mostly Shawn was too lazy to get them to behave correctly the first time, but he wanted to share the virtual earth sample anyway.