About WeatherTAP Mobile

WeatherTAP Mobile is a section of webpages that have been formatted so they can be easily displayed on mobile devices. There is no software to download in order to use WeatherTAP Mobile. All that is required is an Internet browser that has access to the Internet. Just point your Internet browser to www.weathertap.com/mobile to get started. WeatherTAP Mobile is available to all weathertap.com subscribers at no additional cost. You can now access all the weather images from weathertap.com on your mobile device. Each image will be resized to your preferred image size. As a user, you have complete control over how data is displayed on your mobile device by going to the My Settings page. You can also zoom in or out and pan left or right on the images that are displayed. Even a "Full Size" link has 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. Some images can also be animated such as radar and satellite. You can add almost any of the mobile weather pages you access to your My Favorites list for quick access. More details about some of the key features of WeatherTAP Mobile are listed below.

My Favorites

With WeatherTAP Mobile, you can save up to 15 favorites to your My Favorites list. This feature allows the you to quickly launch commonly visited pages and is very similar to the Bookmark feature of Internet browsers. To add a page to the My Favorites list, just browse to the page you want to save and make any adjustments to the image. This includes zooming and panning around on the image until you get to the exact area on the image you would like to be able to view. Then click on the "Add to Favorites" link toward the bottom of the page. This will add that page, including the zooming and panning settings, to your My Favorites list.

Customizable Image Size

WeatherTAP Mobile allows you to set the size of the weather images displayed on your mobile device. This lets the images be displayed at the best possible size for any given mobile device. If you are not sure what image size is best for your mobile device, you can use our mobile device selector to help determine what image size is best.

Zooming and Panning Images

You can zoom and pan around on any image that is display on WeatherTAP Mobile. This allows you to have full control over what part of each image you view. Zooming is accomplished by clicking on one of the zooming links listed as "1", "2", "3" or "4". Zoom level "1" performs the least amount of zooming while zoom level "4" performs the maximum zooming on an image. Once you have zoomed in on an image, then you can pan around on that image. The panning links are "Left", "Right", "Up" and "Down".

Time zone Setting

You can set the time zone that you would like valid dates to be display in. The default is Eastern but you can change this to Central, Mountain or Pacific.

Animation Type and Number of Frames

The animation type can be set to either animated GIF or Javascript. The default setting is animated GIF and this will work on most browsers. If you find that your device is not animating the images, then you can select the Javascript option and try it. If you do select the Javascript option, your device will have to support Javascript and it must be turned on before it will work. The iPhone has a size limit set on animated GIF images so it would be best to use Javascript for that phone. The G1 Android phone does not support animated GIF images at all so using Javascript for animation should work on it.

You can also set the number of animation frames you would like to load. Some browsers do not have much memory and you can decrease the number of animation frames to try an get animations to load. The default is 5 frames but it can be any number from 1 to 10.

Font Size

There are 7 different font size that you can choose from. Depending on which size you select, the text on your browser will appear either smaller or larger. The sizes range from "XX-Small" to "XX-Large". Some devices, such as the iPhone, work well with the "Large" or "X-Large" setting.

Image Alignment

You can select which way you want you images to be aligned. You can choose to have all the images be placed in the center of the page or on the left side of the page.

Look and Feel

The Look and Feel affects how WeatherTAP Mobile looks on your phone. The "Graphical Links" option shows links on the page as buttons and works great on newer cell phones such as the iPhone, Android based phones and newer BlackBerry phones. The "Text Links" opiton shows links on the page as text and works better on older phones. Try out both to see which one will work the best on your phone.

Automatic Login

You can have your mobile device automatically login to the website. This option is useful to turn on so you are not always prompted with a login box every time you visit the site. When automatic login is turned on, it uses a cookie to store your weatherTAP login information. For this to work, your browser must support cookies and have them turned on.

Device Specific Settings / Issues

Blackberry

If the WeatherTAP Mobile Homepage does not look like one of the images listed at the top of this guide, then you need to make sure you have style sheets turned on. To do this on your Blackberry, bring up your Internet browser. Then press the menu button and select "Options" from the menu list. Now select "Browser Configuration". From the Browser Configuration screen, make sure the "Support Style Sheets" option is selected. If you also see a section under the "Support Style Sheets" that reads "Style sheets media type", make sure this is set to "Screen". You will also need to turn HTML Tables on by checking the "Show HTML Tables" or "Support HTML Table" which ever option you have on your phone. You will need to change the Image Quality setting too. To do this, bring up your Internet browser. Then press the menu button and select "Options" from the menu list. Now select "General Properties". From the General Properties screen, set the "Image Quality" to "High (Slower)". This should make the images look as they should.

A BlackBerry Launcher that can be downloaded to your phone. This will allow you to launch WeatherTAP Mobile by clicking on an icon that is located on your BlackBerry Desktop. To download the launcher file just go to the WeatherTAP Mobile page on your BlackBerry and then click on the "Mobile Downloads" link.

iPhone

The Safari browser on the iPhone has a default uncompressed animated GIF size limit of 2 Megabytes. Most of the WeatherTAP animated GIF images, when uncompressed, are larger than this. So you have two options for animations with the iPhone. The first is to set your image size to 300 by 300 and the number of animated image frames to 5. This should make most images stay under the 2 Megabyte limit. The other option is to use Javascript as the animation type and not animated GIF. You should be able to load all 10 frames of animation when using Javascript.

If you have version 2.0 or higher of the operating system installed on your iPhone, then you can add a quick launch icon for WeatherTAP Mobile. To do this, go to the WeatherTAP Mobile website on your iPhone (www.weathertap.com/mobile). Then press the Add Bookmark button listed at the bottom of the Internet browser. This is the button with the "+" sign on it. Then select the "Add To Home Screen" option. This will add a quick launch icon for WeatherTAP Mobile to the Home screen of your iPhone.

Android

As of the time of writing this guide, the Android phone does not support animated GIF images at all. The only way to view animated weather images from WeatherTAP Mobile on an Android phone is by setting the animation type to Javascript. This should then allow the images to animate on an Android phone.

You can add a quick launch icon for WeatherTAP Mobile on your Android phone by following this steps. Before adding a quick launch icon you need to bookmark the WeatherTAP Mobile page in your browser. You can bookmark the page by typing in www.weathertap.com/mobile in the address bar of your browser. Once the page loads, press the bookmark button that is to the right of the address bar. This will bookmark your page.

1. Once you have bookmarked the page, then make sure you are back at your Home Screen.

2. Press and hold anywhere on the Home Screen for about 1 second. That is any "blank" spot on the screen where there are no icons are located.

3. You should see a selection list pop up. Select "Shortcuts" from this list.

4. Select the "Bookmark" option.

5. Now select the WeatherTAP Mobile bookmark that you created earlier.

6. You should now have a quick launch icon for WeatherTAP Mobile on your Home Screen.

Screen Shots