WeatherAlert

By darkmark327
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darkmark327

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Can someone PM a link to the non beta version of this program, i'm having some issues with it and never saved the original.

Anyone else finding it takes the program a good 10 secs plus to start? :huh:

Thanks!

What kind of connection do you have? I guess it would probably take a while on a slower connection because it won't display until it has all the information. (I am working on doing so asynchronously). You haven't had this problem with previous releases?

Anyway you can get the latest release that was sent to auto-updates here:

http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/msowul/WeathAlertZipped.exe

I also have a site set up at http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/msowul/

You can link to that trajik, if you are so inclined. Thank you.

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darkmark327

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I got 512k DSL, weird! Running XP SP2. Sometimes it appears in the tray but doesn't pop up even when I double click on it. Othertimes it appears to lockup completely and I can't do anything with it!

All right, so connection speed obviously isn't it. The tray icon does tend to appear a few moments before the program itself is actually ready to display; as for the lockups, I don't really know; my suggestion is to just give it a minute, in case the connection is just timing out, but beyond that all I can say is that once I make the data updating asynchronous it should help fix this sort of thing.

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darkmark327

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Alrighty, here's another release for you. 2.2.9.4; this version adds the ability to see full-size radar, and replaces the link to the weather.com radar page.

Download it from the first page or the weathalert site.

As you can see, the large radar view allows you a much more detailed view of the radar maps.

post-88-1092521022.jpg

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randy_tho

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This is an awesome program. It seems like all the weather monitoring stuff is either adware or intrusive.

I did have the window sized too small problem at first but exited the program and started it back up and it is flawless. I am using SP2 and didn't get the framework you posted. I imagine the latest framework would be in SP2.

I'm using the build on the first page. It does start up kinda slow but doesn't slow the rest of the system down so it's not that bad.

Much better than having to put up with the weather.com advertisemensts that drive across your screen. :rolleyes:

Does it have a sound for the alert? I haven't tried it yet. That would be nice if you would make it chime with an alert. Maybe pick a wav to play or somethin? Or just a system sound..

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darkmark327

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Earlier today while testing on a VM, I too got the resize bug on its first launch. I will fix it asap, but since it is easily worked around, I see no rush to release a fix immediately.

As I also mentioned, the slow startup issue will probably be mitigated once I rework the data update algorithms.

There are two types of "alerts": The first is the user defined alerts when weather becomes inclement or the temperature goes beyond certain thresholds. These do not play a sound (yet); they only show the balloon tips.

The second is the severe weather alerts from the national weather service. These will be accompanied by a thunder sound effect, and the tray will change color and rapidly switch between the condition icon and the temperature, as well as a balloon tip. A textual readout of the alert will appear in the main program window as well.

I will probably give the option to play a sound with the notifications as well; the default will be to utilize whatever sound is setup for a system exclamation, which is what I did for the NWS alerts originally so that will be easy to implement. Both will be configurable to play local sound files also.

That being said, the next items on the agenda are the improved data update and display system which should mitigate the pauses while data is being downloaded, followed by the inclusion of detailed and hourly forecast data. The sound improvements will follow that.

As always, I appreciate the feedback.

Edited by darkmark327
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darkmark327

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FWIW I fixed the resize bug. It was introduced when I included support for large fonts; normally if you have an invalid location, it automatically resizes the window to the extended view.

The problem is that to support large fonts, the constants that I use for layout and positioning are determined at startup based on the sizes of the controls.

The resize to extended I just mentioned would occur, since there is no valid location selected yet (because it's the first run), and this would happen before those constants were determined, screwing them up for the rest of the session.

Upgrading the framework appeared to fix it because of course, once you have a location from the first setup, the problem wouldn't recur anyway.

Just in case you were curious ; )

Edited by darkmark327
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Trajik 2600

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I have a problem running it on Windows Server 2003, in that if I logoff/shutdown/restart (the program is set to minimize on close and minimize) it won't end my session until I manually close the program. I set it to not resize on close to get around it.

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darkmark327

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I have a problem running it on Windows Server 2003, in that if I logoff/shutdown/restart (the program is set to minimize on close and minimize) it won't end my session until I manually close the program. I set it to not resize on close to get around it.

Unfortunately I can seem to offer no workaround or fix; the procedure I use to handle this situation works flawlessly in all the environments in which I've tested it (2000, XP, Me) and is the procedure outlined in the MSDN.

Override the message loop and set a flag if WM_QUERYENDSESSION (the message windows sends when it's attempting to shut down the system) is sent; use this flag to quit the program (instead of hiding to the tray).

I'll install ws2k3 on a VM and see what I can do but I don't see anything else I can do for now.

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AlwaysSmilingGUY

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I'm curious.. I just downloaded the program, and if it works out for me, I may add it to a browser I modified.

Currently, I have one from Planet Source Code on there (WeatherGrabber) but, it doesn't seem to want to work all the time. So, if yours works, I would like to include it in my Package & Deployment for the browser.

Feel free to email me with your answer, and if you have any questions. Just so you know, I won't alter your program, just include the exe file in my P&D.

Patrick.

[email protected]

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darkmark327

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I'm curious.. I just downloaded the program, and if it works out for me, I may add it to a browser I modified.

Currently, I have one from Planet Source Code on there (WeatherGrabber) but, it doesn't seem to want to work all the time. So, if yours works, I would like to include it in my Package & Deployment for the browser.

Feel free to email me with your answer, and if you have any questions. Just so you know, I won't alter your program, just include the exe file in my P&D.

Patrick.

Anything to aid the program's proliferation would be appreciated, thanks. (Although the SWA, radar, and soon the hour-by-hour forecast are all sort of dodgy as far as weather.com's guidelines go, so hopefully we'll still, if you pardon the expression, stay below their radar ;))
I do like it.. About the only warning I can think of that you may want to add is flood warnings. So far, that's all I can come up with.

Patrick.

Although I doubt that is an actual weather condition that they'd display, there's no harm in adding it.

How Do I change that do the Celsius ( c not f ) ???
Preferences->Settings, it's just below where you input your location.
I have been using this app since you made it available and I must say that I love it. I even stopped using a Samurize config to use this one. Each update adds new and/or improved options to the app. Keep up the great work. Thanks for a great weather tool!!

That's all I hope for. Thank you.

Also, good news Trajik. Apparently something might have broken as far as exiting the program when Windows exits (shutdown/logon) since I've experienced some issues myself. I took another look and added something that seems to have helped (I hadn't changed anything but for whatever reason it didn't work right). In the next release hopefully it will eliminate your issue as well.

I'm in the process of modifying the settings to add the options to associate sound files with weather notifications (and change the one for alerts). I've decided that such a release will be 2.3 and the forecast improvements will be 2.4, since what I have so far (once I'm done with settings) seems stable enough to be a public release, so I may as well distribute the accumulated features and stability to everyone while I work on the forecasts.

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Trajik 2600

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Also, good news Trajik. Apparently something might have broken as far as exiting the program when Windows exits (shutdown/logon) since I've experienced some issues myself. I took another look and added something that seems to have helped (I hadn't changed anything but for whatever reason it didn't work right). In the next release hopefully it will eliminate your issue as well.

Awesome - I'll be able to put it back in my Startup group :p

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AlwaysSmilingGUY

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Well, I've been using it since I downloaded it.. I even went so far as to shut down weatherbug, and take that out of my startup.. I'll probably uninstall that soon also.

A question for you. The web browser that I modified is in Visual Basic 6.0. So, when I do the package & deployment for it, I'll include your program and the dotnetfix.exe program. What I'm wondering is, if you would know of a scripting command I can put into the P&D wizard to automatically check for .NET Framework, and if it isn't installed, then install it? Then, maybe a script to delete the dotnetfix.exe program after the installation is finished.

I'm fairly new to setting up deployments and even creating programs in VB. Although, I may get a copy of VB.NET, and see if I can upgrade my browser to it also. That way, they will get the .NET framework anyhow.

Thanks for your help in this.

Patrick.

Oh, and if you haven't heard of any issues with Windows 2000, I'll let you know.. I'll be rebooting soon, I'm sure.. I've got SP4 on my computer, and as far as I know, all of the updates that are required.

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AlwaysSmilingGUY

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One other question, and possibly a suggestion for a future release.. Is there any way of making the auto update sooner? Right now, I'm in some severe weather, and the update won't happen for another 20 minutes. Of course, they haven't issued any alerts for my town yet, that I know of.

Maybe, if possible, make it so the user can select how frequent the updates happen.. Unless, of course, weather.com won't let you do that.

Patrick.

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