Most people hate reading documentation about as much as I hate writing it. But, at least some documentation is necessary no matter how easy the program is to operate. All programs have a few things that they do that need at least a passing explanation. This program is pretty easy to use, and anyone who can read English should be able to operate the program with little or no help from this file. But, not everyone is familiar with all aspects of the Internet, and/or weather information, so each section of the program is explained in some detail.

First thing you should know is that you shouldn't rely on this program to warn you of severe weather that might affect your life and property. Use your local TV and Radio Stations as a more reliable means of finding out about severe weather in your area. Severe weather is only reported for the U.S. only. I've tried very hard to give you a piece of software that does what it is supposed to, give you the latest weather information from the Internet. But, and this is a big BUT... any tool can fail for any number of reasons. Don't use this program to inform you or anyone else of real life threats. It can fail to warn you in time to avoid a dangerous situation.

Unzip WeatherXpress to any directory. Before starting the Setup program, make sure there are no other programs running, especially if you are running Windows NT. Start the Setup exe by double clicking. WeatherXpress will install to any directory you choose. Reboot after installing. Once you are back in Windows, connect to the Internet, go to your start menu and find the WeatherXpress icon. The WeatherXpress icon can be found by pressing the "Start" button, then selecting the "Programs" area, then go to the bottom of the programs folder listings. The WeatherXpress icon should be at the bottom of the list. You can make a short cut to put on your desktop by right clicking the icon and selecting "Create Shortcut." Once you've done this find the new icon in the Start/Program menu list, right click it, hold down the mouse button, and drag it to your desktop. Double click the new icon to launch the program. On start up you will be able to select cities from different states, it's an automatic prompt when WeatherXpress starts for the first time. You can select up to 10 different cities to watch in the program. Select how often you want WeatherXpress to update the weather information, and what sound to play when there is a weather warning for a selected city. Now press the Save & Exit button. WeatherXpress will immediately check the NOAA weather site and returns all of the information currently available. If you minimize the All - Weather window the Mini - Weather window pops up. Once the Mini - Weather window is displayed, if you close it, only the icon in your system tray is shown. With the Icon in your system tray you can use it to control these two windows, and shut the program down. Clicking on the "X" (close) button in the All - Weather window will also shut your program down.

WeatherXpress is not Freeware. I have not crippled it in any way so you can try out almost every feature to your complete satisfaction. If you think something is broken let me know. I can only fix things if something is reported. The irritating registration screen will pop-up and stays there for 15 seconds. Once the countdown has finished, you can enter your name and registration key, or just press the cancel button. This screen will not pop up when the program is registered. I hope you see the effort I have put into this program and agree that it is worth the $20. Once you send in your registration fee, you'll be E-Mailed a unique registered key. Just enter your name and registration key exactly like it was sent to you and you won't see the delay ever again and every feature will be activated.

If you bought a site license, select the Site License selection instead of the default single user. Enter the information in the three areas exactly the way that it is listed in the E-Mail that was sent to you. Each computer has a unique name associated with each key. Enter everything exactly or it will not work.

If you are interested in buying a site license just drop me an email with "Site License" as the subject and I'll send you all the information.

Ordinarily, WeatherXpress does not require proxies to interact with the network services of external sources. However, in some network configurations the connection between WeatherXpress and a remote server is blocked by a "firewall." Firewalls protect information in internal computer networks from external access. In doing so, firewalls might limit WeatherXpress's ability to pull information from external sources. To overcome this limitation, WeatherXpress can interact with proxy software. A proxy server sits atop a firewall and acts as a conduit, providing a specific connection for each network service protocol. If you are running WeatherXpress on an internal network from behind a firewall, you'll need from your system administrator the name and associated port number for the server running proxy software for the HTTP network service. A single computer can run multiple servers, with each server connection identified with a port number. A proxy server, like an HTTP server, occupies a port. Typically, a connection uses standardized port numbers for each protocol (for example, HTTP = 80 and FTP = 21). However, unlike common server protocols, the proxy server has no default port and WeatherXpress requires that so that it can communicate with the proxy server.

In the WeatherXpress Options menu you have 3 selections, Use Normal Access (most users), Use Default Proxy Access (for those whose system is set up for proxy service already), and Use Proxy Setup. If you are using a modem or accessing the Internet over a LAN, or some other method that doesn't use a proxy server select Use Normal Access. If your system is configured to use a proxy server already, select Use Default Proxy Access. If you select Use Default Proxy Access and it doesn't work, do the following:

Once you have the proxy servers' name and port number, pull down the file menu in the All - Weather window and select WeatherXpress Options.

Select the "Use Proxy Setup" radio button. Enter the name or the IP number of the proxy server in the large text box, and enter the port number in the small text box. After making your city selections and selecting the sound file for your alert, and any other options available to you, click the "save and exit" button. WeatherXpress should now act just like it normally would with any Internet connection.

If your proxy server also requires either a user name or a password to log on just enter the information in the proper box. This setting requires you press the "Save Password & User" button to save this part of the entry. If you do not have a registered version of WeatherXpress this feature will not work.

You can dial your provider using WeatherXpress to start your connection in one of two ways:

First, set the default selection of "Always Connected" to "Dial-Up." Move the slider control to somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds. If windows already opens an Internet connection when you start your web browser or WeatherXpress already, this is all you need to do. Now instead of getting a "not available" in all the cities you watch the first time around, WeatherXpress will wait up to 90 seconds before it tries to recover the weather info. I decided not to let it wait forever just in case something goes wrong.

The second option is to enter your Dial-Up network name in the Dialer Name box and the connection will be activated and dialed. You can set the "Pause Time" somewhere between 1 and 9 seconds so that WeatherXpress will wait until the Dialer comes up to push the connect button. Once a connection is established the weather information will be recovered. You can also adjust the amount of time WeatherXpress waits here before trying to recover your information by adjusting the slider.

Either way you choose, once a connection is established WeatherXpress starts downloading information immediately when it sees a connection has been established.

WeatherXpress will also log off the Internet after recovering your weather information if you so choose. With more IP services restricting the number of hours their former "Unlimited" Internet connection can be used each month, this is a welcome feature to many of you I know. Also, many of you only have one phone line so tying up a phone all the time isn't practical. Those of you who live outside the U.S. probably have never even had the option of "unlimited" Internet connections and with all of the various ways providers outside the U.S. have of handling Internet access I hope this helps.

It might take you 1 or 2 times before you get the time delays set correctly, but the defaults should give you a good place to start.

A little more about your Dialer Name. When you made your dial up icon you entered a name for it. You need to put the same exact name in the box so WeatherXpress will know which connection to start.

As of version 1.7.0 WeatherXpress has a second smaller window with digital readouts. I the options menu you can have either the mini-weather window or the digital-weather window pop up when you minimize the all-weather window. If you don't want either window to pop up when the all-weather window is minimized you can now turn that feature off. The digital window will alternate between wind speed and gusts if this data is being reported. The speed will be displayed for 2 seconds, then the gusting speed will be displayed for 2 seconds. The anemometer will also change speeds as the wind speeds change, which adds a little more realistic touch to the program. A warning "W" will flash when the selected city has warnings, and the E-Mail icon will appear when new mail is detected. These features are only available to registered users.

When you select your cities in the options menu, you can select alternates to watch from the list of cities in the yellow window. If there are alternates to select from they will be listed. Currently only US sites have alternates. This feature is only available to registered users.

As of version 1.3.0 WeatherXpress can check to see if there has been an update. In the Help menu, click "Verify Current Version." WeatherXpress will contact the WeatherXpress web site and check to see if there have been any updates. If there is a new version, the program will ask you if you want to jump to the WeatherXpress site. Clicking Yes will launch your web browser and load the WeatherXpress page. Once there you can download the latest version.

WeatherXpress gets much of its information from the central NOAA weather site. The information is available to anyone, but the data is there in text lists so a state and city has to be found in the data. WeatherXpress just does all that for you. Other Internet sites provide "backup" and some other "extended" information.

WeatherXpress has several features built in to alert you to warnings about severe weather. You can select visual and/or audio alerts. After selecting one or both alert methods, located off your File Menu selection, make sure you save the settings so they will be active the next time you start WeatherXpress.

There are two items just to the right of the city names in the All - Weather window. One is a "radio" button, the other is a small box. The radio button indicates the currently selected city to watch. Clicking different radio buttons will change the displayed city in your Mini - Weather window and the weather icon if the sky conditions are different from your last selection. The audio alert, if selected, will only sound for the currently selected city if the sound hasn't been played since the last update occurred.

If the box next to the city is gray, no warning information is available for your selected state or city or you have the visual alert feature turned off. The audio alert will only be sounded if your selected city has an alert. When you change the selected city by clicking the different radio buttons or the scrolling buttons in the Mini - Weather window, an alert will be sounded if one exists and hasn't been played since the last update of the weather information. Since all your selected cities could have alerts, selecting each city could sound the alarm. The alarm is only sounded once and will not sound again until the weather information is updated again. If you simply have a weather warning issued for somewhere in your state there will be no sound alert nor will your small box blink on and off when that city is selected. If the box is blinking, clicking the small red box in the All - Weather window will halt its blinking.

This happens because your city doesn't report official weather information to NOAA. Many cities don't have the facilities because of lack of funding. It's just that simple. I live in Lewisville, Texas, they don't report, but since I'm just south of Denton, Texas, and just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I use those two cities to watch. I work in Dallas next to the Addison airport, so I keep an eye on that site also, especially when I'm at work. You'll have to do something similar if your city isn't listed. If and when updates occur to the list of cities the program can watch, I'll post an updated list. If you happen to spot a city not listed and you know it reports, please let me know and I'll add it ASAP.

In the All - Weather window and the Mini-Weather window, right mouse click the city name. A menu with several selections will pop up. You can get the latest state wide forecast, the latest state wide weather warning, the UV index with a chart for that city (if it reports UV), and a U.S. UV map. New for version 1.3.1 - Most US cities show a 2 - 5 day forecast. Just select the 3-day forecast selection at the top of the list. If the reporting station is an airport then you may not be able to recover a forecast for that station.

New feature in Version 1.4.0 - Today in Weather History. Gives a brief rundown of historical happenings related to the weather in some way. Registered version only.

I'm always working on that. Hopefully by the next release I will have your city listed, but I may not realize it if you don't let me know. I'm always looking for somewhere to pull new information from. Some cities around the world I can get now, but it isn't 100 percent complete, so I'm searching further. Be patient. People who like to watch the weather aren't only located in the U.S. and I know it...

WeatherXpress can now access over 2800 cities throughout the world. Version 1.4.1 added Most of Europe, most cities in Mexico, and Most cities in Australia.

If you are using WeatherXpress somewhere that isn't listed please E-Mail me and I'll try and add your country to the list of sites.

Included with WeatherXpress is a "Local Radar" file with several samples of local radar’s around the country. These weather radar pictures on the Internet are many times the same ones your local TV station shows you when the weather is on the news. On the WeatherXpress web site there is a web page with a listing by state of all the local TV station radar sites I've been able to find. If you happen to find one that isn't on the web list I would appreciate it very much if you would send me the URL address to the site so I can add it for others to use. The "Radar Editor" built in to WeatherXpress will launch your browser and bring up my radar web site if you press the "Find Radars" button. Instructions for adding, editing, and deleting sites are built into the editor so no comments about that are needed here. As of version 1.4.1 of WeatherXpress, the number of radar sites you can have has been increased from 5 to 10. Version 1.4.2 and newer will show a list of over 140 radar sites around the U.S. you can select from - no need to "find" them. A selection for "Instructions" or "Radar List" has been added for registered users.

This feature is only available in the registered version of WeatherXpress. Pull down the Horoscope list in the All - Weather window and click on your "Sign." A small window will pop up and display your horoscope for today. If you want even more info just press the "Tell Me More" button and you will be connected to an Internet site that has a lot more than just a daily horoscope.

When you pull down the menu under Maps & Pictures, Earth Daylight Area and Moon Phase are just a couple of the options in the "Sky" menu. The Earth Daylight Area displays the current area that is in Daylight when you requested the picture. The Moon Phase shows the current phase the moon is in using a real picture of the moon. You can send any of these to the printer by right clicking and selecting "print." New for version 1.4.3, Registered only, is the display of the Rise and Set times of the Sun, Moon, and Planets based on your zip code entered in the options menu. Some additional information about the night sky for each week, and each month can be viewed from this menu. Also, a complete list of dates for all meteor showers for the current year can be displayed.

This new feature makes it easy. Select Tropical Storms menu in the All - Weather window. Now select Hurricanes. Since information is pulled in from the Internet don't expect to see anything unless you are connected. First select the area of the world you wish to view, Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, or Western Pacific. Next, select the year to display. Note that this program will not go out of date, it will automatically add a new year when the year changes. As long as the information on the Internet is kept in the same format, this program will read it properly. When you select the year, WeatherXpress will automatically connect and pull in the information about all the storms for the year that you selected. At this time it also downloads and displays a map with all the storms that occurred for that year. At this point you can select the data option and an explanation of the various colors used on the charts will be displayed. Now to recover the data and picture of an individual storm just double click the name of the storm in the list. All the data about the storm positions during its life and a map with just the track of that storm will be displayed. This information is downloaded from the Internet so how fast it displays will depend on your connection. At any point that a picture is displayed you can print it, or save it to disk. To do either, just right mouse click the picture and select "show large view." Once in this window you can right mouse click the picture and print or save the window. Currently you can't save the text, but I'm working on an enhanced feature that will display the picture and the text together so it can be printed. I haven't worked out all the details yet, but the next version, 1.3.4 may have that capability.

Weather Buoys are usually small devices, anchored or free floating in a body of water. There are Buoys in both fresh water lakes and rivers, as well as ocean and sea buoys. All of them are automated and report quite a bit of weather information about their location. The wind speed is listed in Knots Per Hour, and other measurements are given in metric terms. The wave height is reported in Meters, not feet.

Each reporting point has latitude and longitude listing so you can locate exactly where a particular buoy is on a map or globe. I have found names for about 300 buoys, but there are hundreds of others I don't know the name of or location for. The ones I don't have a name for are simply listed as "Weather Buoy (ID XXXXX)" and that's it. If you happen to know the official name for a weather buoy, or just its location, and it is simply listed "Weather Buoy" right now, please send me an E-Mail and I'll update it's name and ID number. BTW, I know that not all of these stations are "Buoys." Some are coastal observation points so please don't E-Mail me about it. I just decided to "lump" them all together and call them buoys to make it easier.

You can check out the Buoy information by selecting "Worldwide Buoy Info" from the pull down menu under "Ocean Maps & Buoys" in the All - Weather window. Once the buoy window appears click the "Get Info" button to get the current list of reporting sites. This can take a minute or so sometimes, so wait until something happens before you give up on it. I've seen reports listing as few as 6 buoy sites, to as many as 385, so you never know how many reports you'll get back. Sometimes if you wait a few minutes and try again you'll get more reports. Each time buoy data is pulled in from the Internet, it is saved in the Buoy directory located in your WeatherXpress directory. If you wanted to keep the data for some reason you could just rename the "BuoyData.wmd" file that is created anew each time you recover the information.

If you are looking for a particular buoy ID number you can type it into the "Find" box and press enter. If the site exists in the list the program will display the data and scroll to the listed site. You can use "Find" to search for a named buoy in the same way. The search is not case sensitive so you don't need to worry about upper and lower case letters.

This feature is only available to registered users.

You never know when a site will not return information. It could be down, or just too busy to send something to you in answer to your request for it. If one map doesn't return, pick a different one.

As of this writing, there are over 6000 cameras pointing at something and sending the image to the Internet at some interval, from every 10 seconds, to once a day, even once a week. Some sites have started using Java to stream their images. Under normal circumstances WeatherXpress can't display these, but I'm working on some enhancements so it may be possible in the future. I only have about 575 cameras listed right now. It took weeks to check each site, but I have access to a T-1 line at work, so after hours and during lunch, I scanned as many as I could test each day until I finished. If you find some valid camera sites that aren't on my list, e-mail the name of the site, the URL address, and the link to the camera picture if possible. I'm always looking for more Animal sites. There isn’t that many right now. I think I have about 50. Several are only up at certain times of the year, and may not be valid right now. A couple of my favorites are Trout Cam in California, and Elephant Cam. Steve's Ant Farm has been around a long time, but it's a little boring... I wish he would liven it up a little. I'll probably put a cam site up myself sometime soon so stay tuned.

Just double click one of the camera descriptions in the list. Currently there are several lists. You can access them by selecting Web Cameras in the drop down menu in the Web Cam window.

Use the pull down file menu, or right mouse click on a valid picture. Select save if you want to save a picture. Find the directory folder where you want to store the picture. Type in a name. Select a file type. You will have one of two choices, depending on the file, bmp & gif, or bmp and jpg. The gif or jpg format will not take up as much space as the bmp format. To print, select print. The image will be sent to your default printer. It will print in color if your printer has that capability, otherwise it will be gray scale.

Once an image is displayed, either right mouse click the image or pull down the "file" menu in the Web Camera window and select Set As Wallpaper. If there is a valid camera image a message will be displayed saying the name of the new wallpaper image, and the image should now be your background screen.

To add a new site, enter the name of the site in the first text box, the URL address in the second text box, and the complete URL address of the picture you want to recover. Then, press the "Add Site" button, or you can drag the site name to the list and drop it in. To delete a site, ensure you have selected a valid site, then press the "Delete Site" button, or you can "drag" the site name to the trash icon located on the form.

When you delete a site the information is stored in the "trash can." WeatherXpress only keeps the information on the last site deleted for as long as the Web Camera window is open. So, if you haven't exited the window then the last site you deleted can be recovered. Right mouse - click the trash can icon and select "restore site."

Right now you can only copy one site at a time. This might change. Select the site you want to copy from the list. Now load the list you want to copy the site to. Once it is displayed, simply add the site to the list.

You can watch a continuous series of pictures from the selected site at varying intervals by selecting the amount of time between picture recovery, 10 seconds to 5 minutes, then put a check "Auto-Load" box. Now when you "double-click" the site in the list it will recover pictures at the specified interval until you cancel the process.

You can select a site in the list and move it up or down in the list by pressing the "Arrow" buttons. Once you have the site where you want it, press the save button.

If you want your list in alphabetical order, just press the "Sort List" button. Press the "Save" button if you want to keep the list in the sorted order.

Pulling down the file menu in the "All - Weather window," will show a list of features you can set. They all are saved when you save a new set of cities, change a city, or select save, or save and exit from the file menu. You can select both visual and/or sound alerts when weather warnings occur. You can also make the desktop Mini - Weather window always stay on top, or not, it's your choice. On Start Up you can either have the large window showing all of your selected cities, or go directly to the Mini-Weather window. WeatherXpress Options brings up your list of Cities to choose from along with a few other options. You can choose 10 cities, and the update interval. By the way, you can use this program to keep your connection alive (except for AOL users) if you set the update interval to 10 or 15 minutes. If you select "Sound" in the alerts selection, you can select from numerous sounds located in the "Sounds" folder in your WeatherXpress directory. The selected sound is played when an alert for your currently selected city is displayed in the "Mini-Weather" or "All - Weather" windows. You can refresh your site whenever you like by selecting "Refresh" and choosing "Now." The refresh can be set to Auto or Manual, your choice.

Not a problem. The only requirement is that the sound must be in a WAV format. Just copy the file to the "sounds" directory in your WeatherXpress directory. There are Zip files on the WeatherXpress web site with lots of different sounds, some or all of them you might want to try out.

Not a problem. As of Version 1.2.9 all readouts will display in metric or U.S. units of measure when you select Celsius or Fahrenheit for your temperature readouts. The remarks section can contain anything so it is the only field that isn't converted. Some stations report something using Celsius and Fahrenheit, but most of them report in Fahrenheit. Visibility and other such things will usually be in miles.

If you have registered WeatherXpress, you can save the observations automatically by selecting "Log Checked Sites" in the Options Menu. If you select the logging option, "Use Separate Log Files" each selected city will be saved as a separate file. The first selection saves each selected city in one file. To select the cities you want to save logs for, click the box next to the city in the "Watch These" list. Since these files will grow each time an observation is requested by WeatherXpress, you need to watch them so they don't use up all your hard drive space. These files are located in the "Log" directory that is located in your WeatherXpress directory. They are saved as simple text files so you can open them with any text-editing program.

A short format can be selected as an option. If you select "Use Short Format" then any log saved will be saved in the following format:

|Station Name|Date|Time|Sky|Temp|DewPoint|Humidity|Wind|Pressure|UV|Remarks|

The vertical lines separate each field because most fields are variable length, and they could be empty.

Each station report saved in the short format is saved this way. This saves a lot of space, and it allows you to write a simple program to read the data if you so desire. Each city can be saved this way separately, or one log file with all the cities.

The single log file name is: WM_Log.txt

The separate city log files are named for the cities: City Name_Log.txt

This probably won't happen to you, but if you are watching two cities with the same names.... all data will be put in the same file in the order they are listed in your selections. If this ever becomes a serious problem I will attempt to fix it so the cities would be saved separately. Since the State, Country, or Province is saved in front of the city names it shouldn't cause any undo trouble.

If you have registered WeatherXpress, you can set your system time to match the exact time according the U.S. Naval Atomic Clock. In the All - Weather window click on Help, then select Check System Time. The correct time will be recovered and displayed along with your system time. If you want to set your system clock to match the official time, click the "Yes" button. The time will be checked again and your system time will be set to match. WeatherXpress assumes your system time is displayed as: HH:MM:SS format. If it isn't the time may not be set correctly. WeatherXpress will only synchronize the minutes and seconds, not the hour. If your connection is good your time should be set to within 1 second of the official time due to delays in web information recovery.

Using the tray icon for WeatherXpress, you can control which window is displayed, refresh the weather information, and shut down the program. Right click the tray icon for a menu of these selections. If the current window is behind something on your screen you can double click the icon with your left mouse button to bring up the last window viewed or the current window hidden behind something else.

As sky conditions change the icon in the system tray will change. Currently there are 25 different icons to display the different sky conditions. One of the 25 icons is a "Not Reported or Not Recognized" icon (NR). If the sky conditions aren't reported, the city information isn't currently available, or the sky condition isn't understood, the NR icon will be displayed. One little feature I added was the ability to select one of the icons to display the sky conditions "your way." What that means is that if you want a different icon to display when a certain sky condition occurs instead of the one I chose for you, just type in the sky condition, select the icon you like, and save it. From that point on, anytime that sky condition occurs for any city, "your" selection is shown. Any selection you make over-rides the defaults in the program. And, Oops.... some sky condition pops up that WeatherXpress doesn't recognize.... guess what, you can fix that. Just type that condition in exactly the way it's displayed in the sky conditions label, select the icon you want to associate with that "unknown" condition, save it.... now it's recognized by WeatherXpress. Make sure to check out the sky condition in both the All - Weather window and the Mini - Weather window to make sure that all the text is displayed.... sometimes the display is longer than the All - Weather window can display so you don't see it all. The little catch with all this is WeatherXpress must be registered to be able to use this "editing" feature.....

As of version 1.5.4 there are icons that display depending on what time of day it is. If your local time is before 6:00 AM (06:00) or after 7:00 PM (19:00) the "Night" icons will now be displayed. All other hours will display the "Day" icons. Note that these icons display according to your time, not the time at the location you are watching.

This is a Registered feature only.

Web based E-Mail, like Hotmail for example, is quite a bit different from normal Pop 3 E-Mail. You can now check for new web based E-Mail at two different sites, Hotmail and ZDNet Mail. I will try and add others, but it isn’t easy, and they don’t all lend themselves to being accessed without the use of a browser with "cookies" enabled.

To add this check on either or both sites, go to the options menu, E-Mail tab. Enter your user name and password to the right of the check box that indicates the web mail name. Just as you can check the E-Mail at your Pop 3 sites each time the weather is updated, Weather MAX can check your web E-Mail at the same time. Put a check in the box to activate this feature. Now, unlike conventional E-Mail, there is no way to know if the new messages on the web site are the same new messages Weather MAX saw the last time it checked. This will cause the program to constantly remind you every time it updates that there is new mail at the web site if it finds that new messages are there and you haven’t read them yet. I usually don’t keep it active all the time since you can check it manually from the file menu. When you check the web mail from the file menu, it will return the total number of mail messages and the number of new messages. I don’t consider my web mail to be as critical as my Pop 3 mail, but you may be different.

This is a registered only feature. Also, these sites aren’t checked in the E-Mail alerts, so keep that in mind.

Since WeatherXpress is designed to pretty much run all of the time, why run other programs in the background if you don't have to? Checking E-Mail requires something running all the time. Now WeatherXpress can watch up to 3 different sites while it's running. It's fast and easy. Your mail is checked each time that the weather information is updated. If you select an E-Mail wav file, it will play a sound when you have mail. The current weather icon being displayed in the tray will change to an envelope and wave a flag briefly, then change back to the normal weather Icon. In the Mini - Weather window a mail icon will appear, wave a flag, and stay on that window until you click it with your mouse. If you hold your mouse cursor over the mail icon in the Mini - Weather window it will tell you which site has new mail. To activate this feature go to the WeatherXpress options menu and select Internet. Now select "Site 1, Site 2 or Site 3 with the radio buttons. Now, enter the E-Mail server domain name (Host Name), your user name on that E-Mail server, and your password. Click the "Save Site Info" button and it's finished. Repeat the procedure for other E-Mail sites if necessary. If your E-Mail information for a particular site changes, display it with the site selection button, click the "Delete Site" button. That's it. Enter new information if changes need to be made and press the "Save Site Info" button to update. To use this feature, pull the "File" menu down in the All - Weather window and select "Check E-Mail", then click on "Auto" to have WeatherXpress check the mail each time it updates your weather information, or click the "Now" selection to display a notification of any mail you may have at any of the 3 different sites, if any. If you have mail, this selection will tell you how many messages you have at each site that has mail. If you selected "Auto" be sure and save your settings so that this feature is activated when the program starts next time.

The WeatherXpress All - Weather window now has a small E-Mail icon that will show up in the bottom right corner if you have new mail. If you click it, the icon will be removed and not show up again unless new mail is found.

The first time the E-Mail is checked, any messages on the server will be reported as "unread." After the initial check and E-Mail notification, until WeatherXpress is shut down it will remember the difference between E-Mail it has notified you about, and new messages. This is a little fix I added to this feature in version 1.5.2.

The main limitation with this feature is that it only recognizes "Pop 3" mail servers. That may change in the future.

The E-Mail feature is only available to Registered users.

WeatherXpress can send you E-Mail wherever you may be when a Weather Warning is issued for a selected city, or all the cities. It can also E-Mail you when a warning is issued anywhere in the state that your city or cities are located. The warnings that are issued are for any severe weather and also when a severe weather situation is canceled. Not all cities listed for the U.S. are listed in a severe weather warning so if your city has never been part of a severe warning in WeatherXpress then you might just want to watch the state warnings. You might get warnings that don't apply to you, but at least you'll know for sure.

You can also elect to get E-Mail if the temperature rises above a number set by you, or if it falls below a number set by you. If you're worried about a freeze or some very hot temperatures boiling your pet, you can be made aware of it even if WeatherXpress isn't running where you are, but you have access to E-Mail.

You can also select any type of sky condition you want to be made aware of. Fog, ThunderStorm, Ice, Freezing Rain, etc.

So, How do you set it up? Go to the Options menu and select the E-Mail tab. In the area titled "Send Weather E-Mail Alerts" enter the name of your Pop 3 server host name just like checking your E-Mail. Next enter your User Name. Now, in the Send To box, enter the E-Mail address you want the information sent to. If you want the mail sent High Priority, check that box. If you want notices about all your cities or just a selected city make your choice here also.

WeatherXpress can check these settings and send you E-Mail Once Only, Every Cycle (each time it updates), or every so many Cycles (Updates), you choose the interval. You could get a lot of E-Mail if something is constantly meeting your criteria, so if you use this feature make sure you understand that your mail box could fill up quickly if you don't pay attention.

Now for the warning/conditions set-up. In the Alert When section you can set the conditions under which you are sent an E-Mail Alert. Checking the State Warning box will cause WeatherXpress to send you E-Mail alerting you to the fact that Warnings have been issued in the state of the city or cities in your list. A complete listing of the warning/warnings issued in the state will be sent in the E-Mail. If you choose the City Warning, the complete listing will only be sent to you if your city is mentioned anywhere in the list of issued warnings. If you happen to choose both you will only be sent one listing. If you want to be notified that the Temperature is dropping to a number that you are interested in, enter the number to watch for and check the box TEMP < YourNumber. If you want to watch for a Temperature going over a certain number, enter the number and check the box TEMP > YourNumber. Pretty easy to understand I hope... ;-)

Lastly, you can have the program keep a watch on the Sky Conditions. You can put a check next to any sky condition in the list. It can watch for bad as well as good weather. Just put a check in as many of the boxes next to the sky conditions as you like. Most of them are abbreviations, and since there are no clearly defined rules many mean the same thing… you must check all of them that apply to make sure you are notified as you intend.

If you don't choose to have Warnings sent to you, if they exist, the other selections, temperature and sky conditions, will cause the program to send you the current conditions on the city/cities you are watching when something meets your specified warning criteria.

Once you put a check in the Active box, press Save & Refresh, or Save & No Refresh, the program will start checking as soon as it updates. You can turn it off by un-checking the Active box and saving. All your other settings will stay the same, the program just won't respond until it updates again. I'd suggest you experiment with it a little before you leave it to operate on its own, and make sure data you want is being sent the way you expect. Since WeatherXpress can dial your provider and log in as well as log off and hang up the phone, there is a lot of control available in this program.

And lastly for something totally unique, you can turn these E-Mail warnings on and off remotely! That’s right. If you can send an E-Mail, you can turn the weather alerts on and off. To activate this feature, put a check in the "Start Is Active" and/or the "Stop Is Active" box. This allows you to control both features, or restrict them if you like. Next, put a check in the "Delete After Read" box if you want the E-Mail you send to start and stop the alerts to be deleted after WeatherXpress has read and recognized them as commands. The last thing you need to set up is the command you want to use to start and stop the alerts. This line is put in the Subject of your E-Mail. WeatherXpress reads the Subject line of all E-Mail, so, whatever message you want to use to start and stop the alerts WeatherXpress sends you put here. You can use something as simple as Start and Stop… but I suggest that you use something slightly more complex than that. The reason you can enter your own start and stop message here is for security reasons. Anyone you know could start and stop WeatherXpress by sending you E-Mail with the correct subject information. So, change it to something only you know.

If you are having an installation problem, be sure and shut down all programs currently running. Clean out your Temp directory, and delete the directory the install tried to put the files in when you started. There have been occasions where the install looks like a failure under Windows NT, but the only thing the install didn't do was insert an Icon in your start menu. If this happens just drag the program Icon located in the WeatherXpress directory you installed to, to your desktop. WeatherXpress should run even on a failed install on an NT system. Most of the systems where I work are using NT 4.0 and this happened on a couple of them. Any other problems just drop me an E - Mail and I'll try to help you out.

I don't feel that $20.00 is too much to ask for a program like this. It's not a game, it won't wear out, and besides it's pretty cool. Hope you think so too. The program operates in a nearly flawless manner, at least so far. If a problem occurs I will fix it ASAP, and that doesn't mean in a month or so, but usually in a couple of days if it is a serious problem. I'm a professional programmer, and have been for 20 years. I hope it shows in the quality of my work. If you agree, just send in your $20, or you can drop by the web site and order the program through a secure server with your credit card and get rid of that nasty old nag screen! By the way, version 1.3 and above should also alert you to any updates in the program, or other files associated with the use of WeatherXpress. To verify the version is current just click the "verify current version" selection in the help menu. I want to make it easy to upgrade.

http://www.weatherxpress.com

http://homepages.waymark.net/~lperry/weather

To order the program by mail, Send Cash, Check, or Money Order payable in U.S. Dollars to:

Larry F. Perry

1885 Trailridge Dr.

Lewisville, TX. 75067

Be sure to include your E-Mail Address so I can E-Mail the Key to you as soon as I get your payment.

If you're concerned about me just keeping the money and not responding to your order, then just keep your money. I'm not trying to get rich off this program, but I would like to be compensated for it and I certainly won't steal $20 from you or anyone else.