RadarLab is a great way to keep an eye on approaching weather. Many thousands of WeatherTAP users rely on it to keep them informed. One thing that makes RadarLab so useful is the fact that it does not require any special software. It can be used from any browser that supports Sun's Java platform. RadarLab works with Java right out of the box, however, there is a change that you can make to increase the amount of memory available to RadarLab and possibly make it run even better....
By default, Java will only allocate 64MB of memory to web-based programs (called applets) like RadarLab. This is normally more than sufficient to accomplish most common tasks, however, RadarLab must hold its radar images, uncompressed, within the memory allocated to it by Java. When many images are required, like when doing large animations with lots of frames, it is possible that the amount of memory will start approaching the 64MB limit.
Luckily, Sun's latest version of Java allows the user to set the amount of memory that an applet can use. Advanced users can take advantage of this feature to give their Java a boost. Here's how to do it.
First, launch a browser and bring up a radar site in RadarLab. Most users will notice a small coffee cup icon in the System Tray area of their desktop. Right-click on this icon and choose Open Control Panel.
The Java Control Panel will open. Choose the 'Java' tab, then click the "View" button in the Java Applet Runtime Settings area.
Another dialog should open showing runtime parameters for all versions of Java that are installed on your computer. Most people will only have one, but some may have more. Now the trick. Simply add the string "-Xmx128m" in the box labeled "Java Runtime Parameters". Do it for every VM version listed. When you are done, click the OK button.
After that, close down all browser windows and restart the browser. That's all there is to it. The additional memory will be used as cache by RadarLab and should help it run faster and smoother.