WeatherTAP Blog

How do you save in the favorites?

To save to the favorites, just browse to the page you want to save. This includes panning and zooming on the image you want to save. Once you are at the page you want to save, go to the bottom of the page and click on the "Add To Favorites" link. This will prompt you with a text box. Type the name you want to give this favorite in the text box and then press the "Add To Favorites" button. This will add it to your list of favorites. You can access you list of saved favorites by clicking on the "My Favorites" link from the mobile homepage.

This is the best mobile weather site I have seen out there. The way the navigation is set up is awesome. I have been looking for something like this since a certain ex-vice president invented the internet. Thank you!!!!!!!

A new 'Full Size' link has now been added to the image zoom section. This allows the image to be displayed in it's original size. This option can be used on Windows Mobile devices that support the 'Desktop' view option as well as the iPhone or any other device that can display large images.

When I go to forecast on my phone, and select a city such as Wisconsin Dells, WI, I get "Conditions for wi not available". When I go the PC(WeatherTap site) I do get the conditions there? Any thoughts?

Great work folks!
I use to and use weatherTap every day before doing my job as a pipeline pilot.
Keep up the good work. BTW it looks great on my iPhone.
Paul

Jerry-

I'm not sure what the problem is as I cannot duplicate it. I have three different phones and entering "Wisconsin Dells, WI" into the City, State text box works fine (without the quotes of course). It also works fine from my PC. Are you sure you spelled it correctly? What brand and model phone are you using?

Stacy,

I've tried Tusla, Kansas City, and Wisconsin Dells again, and still nothing. e.g. for Tulsa reports, Conditions for OK not available.

I do get Phillips, WI as that was the 1st one I entered, and put it into my favorites.

I have the Motorola Razr V9m.

Other than this issue, everything else looks and works great. Been waiting along time for this to go mobile.

Jerry

Jerry,

It looks like it might be a problem with city names that have spaces in them. I've changed the error message to put quote marks around the place it is trying to find. Try it again and let me know what it says (example: ' OK').I cannot duplicate it on any of our mobile devices. It could be something with the browser for the Razor not passing parameters correctly. Can you try the city names with a '+' signs in place of spaces? I think someone here at work has a Razor. I'll try it on their phone to see if it does the same.

Stacy,

I know what I did wrong.

When I entered the city name I jumped down to the next line and entered the state where the station ID should be.

This is common in other weather formats that I have used, such as Accuweather Mobile.

Once I entered the city and state on the same line, everything was cool.

Sorry for the mass confusion.

Thanks,
Jerry

Particulars as to the windows mobile version ? When access Weathertap radar all I get is the red x in a black box. So I guess something is not loaded on my pre-mobile 5 phone.

Wayne,

I'm not sure what the problem could be. What mobile device are you using and what version of windows mobile is it? Does any of the weather images show or is it only the radar images that don't show? The images are GIF images so I don't know why they would not be showing.

GREAT JOB! I was hoping this was coming 'down the pike' soon. BEST appearance on an HTC/AT&T 8525 of any of the mobile wx sites. Full function animation and zoom FAR out classes the other sites I have tried. This will definitely come in handy in my SKYWARN work in Emergency Management. THANKS AGAIN!

W5LVB

Under the Servere WX section on the mobile phone the links to specific forecasts are not available such as the Advisories. When will those be available?

Jerry

Jerry,

I'm not sure what you mean. You can get to the Watches/Warnings/Advisories by clicking on the "Severe Advisories" link on the Severe Weather Page. What exactly can you not get to that you would like to see?

Stacy,

I click on Severe Weather. The under the heading Text Data, I select Advisories. Then under the Severe Advisories, I selected Winter Weather Advisories. On that page for example:

MT
Billings (WFO) KBYZ.

KBYZ the forecast office in not clickable, nor are any others. That is just on my mobile phone. I works on the website.

Jerry

I like the new forecast page with radar and station info. If clouds appeared there I would not have to then go to several more pages for the complete picture.

On the Motorola Q I find that in Explorer, even with a forecast map full size it is still to small and not readable. However when running Opera as the browser they are much easier to read. Am I missing something?

Thanks for adding this feature (mobilewx).

Jerry,

What brand and model phone are you using? I've tested it on the Treo 700w, LG VX8700, LG Voyager and iPhone. It displays properly on these phones. I went ahead and redone the WWA pages so they use only basic html (no tables). Please let me know if the links are working for you now.

James,

I'm not sure why the image would look better under Opera than Explorer. What size do you have the images set to? If you have the image size set too big, Explorer will shrink the image down to fit the screen unless you are viewing it in 'Desktop' mode. Could this be what is happening?

James,

I've been looking at your settings and it looks like you have your image size set to 180x180. The Motorola Q has a screen resolution of 320x240. The images would look better if you set the image size to at least 240x240. It would look the best set to 300x300. Try this and then see how the images look.

Stacy:

I have the Motorola Razr V9m.

Most links are now working in the Text Data section for Advisories, Summaries/Statements, and Forecasts.

The only thing I have a problem with right now is the Nowcast section. If you can do the same thing to that one, then everything will be working.

Thanks,
Jerry

Jerry,

The Nowcasts are done the same way as the Advisories. If your phone is showing them the old way, you may need to refresh that page on your phone.

Explorer was not set to desktop. That helped. I went thru the setup for the screen size using my desktop computer assuming that the screen res. would be set for any mobile device when I used it on the new site. Either that is not that case or I failed to do it correctly.

The default view is better for the forcast page as everything fits (maybe left justifying the radar would be good?). The desktp view gives me excelent forcast and radar immages.

Thanks for the response.

James

James,

You can use your computer or your mobile device to set the screen size you want. It stores this information into a database. Every time you load an image, it will use this stored image size. So it does not matter which mobile device you use, it will still load the images up using the size you saved in the database. You should be able use the default view to look at the other images too. If you do this, you can zoom and pan around the image using the zoom and pan links under the image.

Thanks Stacy.

Everything looks good and is working great!

Jerry

Great addition to your suite of services! I'm already looking forward to using this as a wireless data solution while storm chasing this spring.

By the way, it looks great on LG Chocolate phones.

One question, however, is there a reason why there is no option to "Add to favorites" for specific text products in the Severe Weather category? If possible, I would like to add a favorite to link directly to the Day 1 AC.

Thanks!

Matthew,

I added an 'Add To Favorites' link to the Convective Outlook Day 1 and Day 2 products. Is this what you were asking for?

Stacey,

That is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for adding the link and for the quick response. Looks great!

Hi, I just cancelled the My-Cast version for the Weathertap. GREAT Product! I have a Sony-Ericson W810i and I can't get any of the pages to animate.When I click on the Animate link it opens the first window then nothing. I have tried to adjust the settings for the animations and nothing helps. Any thoughts?

Jerry,

Do you know if your phone's web browser supports animation? The weather images displayed in WeatherTAP mobile are GIF images. The animated images are animated GIFs. When you load the animated image, does it just load the first frame of the animation or does it not load anything? See if you can load an animated GIF image from a different web site on your phone and see if it works. I'll see if I can find any information regarding your phone and animated GIFs.

This is yet another tool that ALL pilots can use. I love it!

Would you consider including the current METAR coded station conditions along with the decoded conditions at the top of "get forecast" option? This would mimic the same forematting as display of the local conditions under the forecast option for the desktop version of weathertap.

Example:

KMCI 040134Z 08008KT 1/4SM R19R/3500V4000FT -DZ BR OVC001 01/00 A2980 RMK AO2 SFC VIS 3/4 P0000

Thanks very much,

Steve

Love the new service, especially the combination of the local RADAR, current conditions, and forecast on one page. For example today I'm in Austin, TX on business from Colorado Springs CO. Over lunch I brought up first the Austin area weather (cloudy with hi of 80) and then Colorado Springs weather (hi in mid-30s and snow and/or rain). Glad I'm in Texas today.

BTW I use the HP iPAQ PDA.

Great site! This definitely provides the most info and maps over any other weather site I've come across! The zoom function is wonderful!

A comment... I'd love it if the radar color scale was changable. After having looked at the NWS color scale through Radarlab and on other sites, I much prefer it over the default color scale that the site uses.

One quirk... and I know it's an iPhone issue... The iPhone doesn't support animated image looping. It'll play through the loop once, then stop. I know other sites have gotten around the issue by using scripting, though I don't know exactly how they've done it. I'm sure browser detection could be done to target solely the iPhone with this, but it would be a great improvement for those of us with this wonderful device. I'd be willing to be a guinea pig if need be!

Mike,

Actually, the iPhone does support animated image looping, but with limitations. For whatever reason, Apple decided to set the maximum size of uncompressed animated images to 2 Megabytes for the iPhone. This means that when the animated gif is uncompressed by Safari, its total size must be less than 2 Megabytes. There is a way on WeatherTAP Mobile to get the images to animate on an iPhone. If you set your image size to 300 x 300 and then set the number of animation frames to 5, this should keep the total uncompressed image size under the 2 Meg limit. If you want more animation frames, then you must set your image size smaller. We have tested and found that a 300 x 300 image size with 5 animation frames should work on the iPhone.

A little thing.

When getting the mobile local forecast it would be better for my phone (Motorola Q) if the Radar image was left justified. Then it would end up in view when the page loaded.

James

Trying to get some animations on the Blackberry 8830. Have set the number of frames to as low as 3 and res settings to 250x250 but still no luck...any ideas out there. Animations work fine with WeatherBug...thanks!

After using the mobile interface for several weeks, there is one enhancement that I would like to see. From the aviation page, I like being able to see the current, 12, 24, 36, or 48 hour weather depiction forcasts. However its really hard to read the small print in the lower lefthand corner of the map unless one is willing to spend the time to move to that corner and then zoom into the text until it is readable. Is there any way that information could be extracted and presented below the forecast map as ASCII text? What I really want is the effective time/date of that forecast.

Thanks for a really great mobile product.

Don, WA9WWS

Mesodude,

I'm not sure why you cannot get the image in WeatherTAP Mobile to animate. Are you going to the http://www.weathertap.com/mobile address in your phone and not the regular http://www.weathertap.com address? All the changes you set in the Mobile Settings Page only affect images that are displayed through the WeatherTAP Mobile address I listed above. These changes do not affect images on the regular website. I know others who are using WeatherTAP Mobile on their Blackberry devices with no problems. The animations being displayed on the Mobile pages are standard animated GIF images. I'm pretty sure the 8830 can display these images. Let me know if you are still having problems.

Stacey, still not able to get the gif images to animate on the 8830. Do I have to download any software onto the device rather than grabbing it right off the web site? When I call up the home page, I am asked for my username and password even though I thought I had changed that to have the program open up automatically (i.e., bypass the login page). I am making the changes to the number of frames etc at the site thru my mobile device. I think I am setting this up correctly, but something is missing.

Mesodude,

You do not have to download any program. You access the WeatherTAP Mobile pages through your internet browser. You can turn on auto-login on the Mobile page. The option to do this is listed at the bottom of the "Mobile Page Settings" page. This stores a cookie in your browser so you must turn on auto-login from the device you want to auto-login with. Are you going to www.weathertap.com/mobile and not www.weathertap.com? Try the link out at the top of this blog entry to get a feel for how WeatherTAP Mobile should work. Change your settings and see how it updates as far as image size and animation frames. It should behave the same way on your mobile device. All changes you make on "Mobile Page Settings" page are stored in a database and used every time you look at the site. So you can set up you settings from the desktop and view them through your Mobile device. The auto-login is the only option that must be set on the device you want to auto-login with. I don't know why you are having trouble with the animated images. All the pages that you visit through WeatherTAP Mobile should have a white background and not the black background like the regular www.weathertap.com has. If you are seeing a black background, then your not viewing the Mobile page.

Stacey, I tried again this morning by typing in the mobile address and this time the background that first came up was white so I felt I was making some progress. Made all my needed changes on the device and all appears to be working fine now. Thanks for your help!

Don Fraser,

These are Redbook Graphics products and they have the time stamps as part of the graphic. We do not receive the effective time as separate Meta data for the image. So there really isn't a way for us to grab the effective time stamp from the image. What you could do is zoom into the image where the effective time is listed and then save that as one of your Favorites. Then when you click on that favorite, it will automatically be zoomed and panned where it was when you saved it.

Reguards to Animation. On my ATT, HTC 8900 I to have not been able to animate WeatherTaps products. But its not WeatherTap problem. Look at your cell phone service provider. They cut off the amount of data to your phone buy filtering the data. How do I know this. First off My HTC has WiFi built in. When I use the WiFi, The Internet web pages are normal. Amimation works and NO Filters used. This is a UNLIMITED DATA account also. But UNLIMITED has its limits. You may try www.opera.com I got it on my PDA Smart phone HTC 8900. And it work best for all weather data. You can set it up to view desktop or PDA. And the web pages are not wise to it. So WeatherTap products work. Logoning onto WeatherTap can be fun with Opera. Its always looking for password ect.ect. (Fix for Opera Only) Look for Auto logon in on WeatherTap Mobile. Let WxTap send your phone a "Cookie" And then your Good to GO. Just start Opera . hit your Favorites. Or as I do set Wxtap as home page. And you got it. Also to keep your phone from becoming overloaded with web JUNK remeber to clear out your Browers folders but if you clear out your "Cookies" your going to have to logon back on, And reguest auto logon for WxTap. Its no big deal. So have fun and remeber to Soft reset your phone often. Everybodys brain needs a Quick reset now and then. It keeps your phone from info overload in the CPU. And after running a few hours of animation it makes a big difference in preformance. Good Luck. Joe

It would be great if we could get obs (METAR)and TAFs on mobile. Air Force and otherwise. KSSC, KMMT, KTYS, etc. It could be like a mini ADDS!

BDSIII,

You can get METAR and TAF data through the Mobile site. Click on the "Aviation Weather" link and then "Text Data" and then "Free Form METARs and TAFs" or "METARs By State" or "TAFs By State".

Great job on the mobile site. What kind of enhancements do you plan in the future. Also, do you plan to make a site that uses web 2.0 and ajax for the iphone, similar to how weather underground has created an iphone specific site.

Also, hopefully with the new iphone update, mobile safari increases the 2mb limit of gif animations.

Thanks,

Josh

can weathertap mobile be used in the cockpit
during an actual flight?

Larry,

WeatherTAP Mobile can be use on any device that has a web browser and internet connection. So if have an internet connection while you are in the cockpit during a flight, then yes. But if you do not have an internet connection while you are flying, then you would not be able to use it.