Usage:

As denoted on the HWscroll overview page, HWscroll is based on the TextScroll Applet written by Kevin Swain.  HWscroll is a modified version that better integrates with HAMweather  Because of this much of the documentation below is the same as for the TextScroll Applet.  If you want to find more information on the TextScroll applet, visit the TextScroll web site.

Once the HWscroll software package is installed on your server, to use it you have to do basically two things:

  1. Add HWscroll to your web pages, by ading the <APPLET> tag to the pages you want HWscroll to be in.
  2. You will need to specify what type of foreast you want HWscroll to display using <PARAM> tags in the <APPLET> tag.

The applet goes out with the web page, then looks at the <PARAM> tag you've supplied with that page that holds the info on what forecast information you need. Below is an example of what code to add to your web page to include HWScroll:

<APPLET CODEBASE="http://www.hamweather.com/hwscroll" CODE="HWTextScroll.class" WIDTH=250 HEIGHT=200>
    <PARAM NAME="hwurl" VALUE="http://www.hamweather.com/cgi-bin/hamweather.cgi">
    <PARAM NAME='forecast' value='zone'>
    <PARAM NAME='state' value='va'>
    <PARAM NAME='place' value='roanoke'>
    <PARAM NAME='template' value='zonejava'>
</APPLET>

The above example would include the HWscroll applet in your page and display the zone forecast for Ronaoke, Virginia.

Notice CODEBASE in the <APPLET> tag.  The URL you set this to should be to the directory that contains the HWTextScroll applet on your server.

The <PARAM> tag that contains the 'hwurl' element is set to the URL of either the hamweather.cgi or the hwscroll.cgi depending on what weather information you need displayed.  If you want to display the zone forecast, warnings or other text information available from the hamweather.cgi then you will put the url to the hamweather.cgi in here.

If you wanted to display the Forecasts for major US cities, or the current observations for major us cities or localities within a state, as seen in the demo,  then you will set the hwurl parameter to the url of the hwscroll.cgi.

NOTE: The URL in the CODEBASE and the URL for the 'hwurl' parameter must  point to the same server, since java applets can only open network connections with the server they came from.  The html pages containing the HWscroll applet can be anywhere, they do not even have ot be on the same machine.   Thus you can actually let your web visitors add the hwscroll applet to their pages.

Parameters:

This section describes the legal <PARAM> tags permitted to be used with the HWscroll applet. This information is current as of version 1.0. Parameter tags are put in the HTML file containing the applet, in between the <APPLET> tag and the </APPLET> tag. Here is an example of how you would use these parameter values to specify that the HWscroll applet should fecth the and display the forecast for Roanoke, VA, and refresh it every time it has been displayed 5 times.

<APPLET CODEBASE="http://www.hamweather.com/hwscroll" CODE="HWTextScroll.class" WIDTH=250 HEIGHT=200>
    <PARAM NAME="hwurl" VALUE="http://www.hamweather.com/cgi-bin/hamweather.cgi">
    <PARAM NAME='forecast' value='zone'>
    <PARAM NAME='state' value='va'>
    <PARAM NAME='place' value='roanoke'>
    <PARAM NAME='template' value='zonejava'>

   <PARAM NAME="refresh" VALUE="5">
</APPLET>

The following table lists and describes the various parameters that can be used with HWscroll:

Name Description Example
Strictly Weather Related Parameters
forecast The forecast to display.  If you are connecting to the hamweather.cgi (Denoted by the 'hwurl' parameter) for the forecast then this can be set to any of the forecast types supported by the hamweather.cgi.

If connecting to the hwscroll.cgi this can be set to:

  • 'nf' for forecast for major cities throughout the US.
  • 'ns' for current observations for major cities throughout the US.
  • 'hourly' for the current observations for localities within a state.
<PARAM NAME="forecast" VALUE="hourly">
state This indicated what state the forecast is needed for.  If you are  wanting info on the us (National summaries or forecasts of major cities) set this value to 'us' otherwise set it to the state name or abbreviation. <PARAM NAME="state" VALUE="va">
place The place that the forecast is needed for. <PARAM NAME="place" VALUE="roanoke">
country The country the forecast is needed for.  This should be the two letter country abbreviation.  Currently only 'us' for the United States and 'ca' for Canada are supported. 

'us' is the default used in case you do not provide the country parameter.

<PARAM NAME="country" VALUE="us">
icao The ICAO code for the place that you need the forecast for.

This is only supported when the forecast parameter is set to metar, to fetch the current conditions.

<PARAM NAME="icao" VALUE="KRIC">
zone The weather zone number that the forecast is needed for. 

This is only supported when the forecast parameter is set to zone, zandh or shortterm.  Basically the 'zone' parameter can be used in place of the 'place' parameter.

<PARAM NAME="zone" VALUE="1">
template This is the alt template to use when outputting the forecast <PARAM NAME="template" VALUE="zonejava">
user This is the current hamweather user.  Helps signify what user templates to use.   This does not need to be specified if accessing the default user or if their is only one hamweather user set up. <PARAM NAME="user" VALUE="lee">
theme This is the current hamweather theme to use.  Helps signify what hamweather theme to use when outputting the forecast. 

This is included for compatibility with HAMweather, but not usually needed.

<PARAM NAME="theme" VALUE="default">
hwurl This is the url to either the hamweather.cgi or the hwscroll.cgi.  The HWscroll applet uses this to determine where to get the forecast from. <PARAM NAME="hwurl" VALUE="http://www.hamweather.com/cgi-bin/hamweather.cgi">
Applet Layout Parameters
fontface The style of Font to use. It must be a type supported by Java. If an invalid font face is specified, SansSerif will be used. SansSerif is also the default font face. Permitted values are:
  • SansSerif
  • Serif
  • Monospaced

 

<PARAM NAME="fontface" VALUE="SansSerif">
fontsize The size of Font to use. If an invalid size is specified, the default will be used. The default font size is 10. <PARAM NAME="fontsize" VALUE="12">
speed The speed of scrolling to use. Valid values are all numbers from HWTextScroll.MIN_SPEED (1) to HWTextScroll.MAX_SPEED (100), with HWTextScroll.MIN_SPEED being the slowest and HWTextScroll.MAX_SPEED being the fastest. The default is HWTextScroll.DEFAULT_SPEED (70). <PARAM NAME="speed" VALUE="65">
foreground The foreground color for the applet. This will be the color of the text. The default is white. It must be a trio of integer values which make up a legal RGB color value. Each integer value must be between 0 and 255, inclusively. The example sets the foreground color to a shade of red. <PARAM NAME="foreground" VALUE="144, 32, 32">
background The background color for the applet. The default is black. It must be a trio of integer values which make up a legal RGB color value. Each integer value must be between 0 and 255, inclusively. The example sets the foreground color to a light blue. <PARAM NAME="background" VALUE="224, 224, 255">
refresh This indicates that the applet should re-request the data from the server after the weather information  has been repeated n times, where n is the integer argument to this parameter. The example to the right will reload the weather data after it has completely displayed 3 times. Note that this is simply when it starts to load the data again. The data will most likely not be available instantaneously, so it will display the current data again before replacing it with the new data. This means it might actually display 4 or even 5 times before you'll actually see the new data. The benefit of this is that your data will not be changed in the middle of a presentation, it will only be updated at the end. <PARAM NAME="refresh" VALUE="3">
fgloadcolor This lets you specify what the applet should use for a foreground color while it is loading data. The default is blue. This is the color the "Loading data ..." string will be displayed in. You generally won't have to use this unless you are really concerned about it fitting into your page during loading. The default is blue. It must be a trio of integer values which make up a legal RGB color value. Each integer value must be between 0 and 255, inclusively. The example sets the foreground color to green. <PARAM NAME="fgloadcolor" VALUE="32, 144, 32">
bgloadcolor This lets you specify what the applet should use for a background color while it is loading data. The default is light blue. It must be a trio of integer values which make up a legal RGB color value. Each integer value must be between 0 and 255, inclusively. The example sets the background color to a light green. <PARAM NAME="bgloadcolor" VALUE="224, 255, 224">
wraptext This lets you specify whether the applet should apply automatic line wrapping or not. An argument of true will apply line wrapping, an argument of false will wrap the lines as they appear in the data file. This feature was included for users who want tight control of where lines are wrapped. <PARAM NAME="wraptext" VALUE="false">

Note that most of the Applet layout parameters can be specified in the text file itself, with the exception of the weather related, and the text wrapping. The text wrapping is performed when the data is loaded. Thus, the only mandatory <PARAM> tags are the weather related ones.

Several of the layout parameters can be prefixed with "left" or "right" to produce the same effect on the specific pane. Panes are described in the next section. If the regular parameter name is used, the right pane is assumed. These extra param tags are:

They configure the obvious parameters.