vBulletin Taskbar Ticker.

This is based on a hack at www.theforumz.com and written by Gutspiller. It is reposted here for the benefit of all licensed vBulletin Owners and their communities.

This add-on allows your users to see your most up-to-date topics in their Windows Taskbar (sorry Mac and Linux users). It has a scrolling display using the Marquee Tag. You can change the HTML to present anything you want really though.

Here are the features:

1. It now uses Global.php to connect to the database.
2. It now uses vBulletins database class to perform database operations.
3. It will show the latest topics to the user based on their vBulletin usergroup and the appropriate permissions. This allows you to hide private forums still.
4. All forum url's and titles are now pulled from the vBulletin Options.
5. All query and variable names fit in with vBulletin's naming scheme better.
6. All links reuse the same window.

One thing I haven't done yet is convert the whole thing to use templates though if I get the time I will do that because I hate having HTML in the code.

Installation

• Edit ticker2.php and change the Title tag to represent what you want it to say.
• Upload ticker.php to your website.

End User Installation
To install the ticker on your Windows 98 or higher computer (also works on Windows 95 with IE5+ installed) follow these instructions.

1. Right-click on your Taskbar and go to toolbars->new toolbar
2. Type "http://www.domain.com/forums/ticker2.php" without the quotes in the location box
3. Click OK

Make sure to change the domain so that it points to the proper location for them.

There is no support for this outside this thread but all you should have to do is upload it and create a new toolbar. It works on my machine and no there isn't a public demo yet. Anyway, Enjoy it.

Well done Bro :) Made some changes to the width and took off the username/replies and it fits right nice :)

Great idea, but I can't get mine to work correctly. It works when I load it in the browser, but doesn't work on the toolbar. On the toolbar the title shows up but nothing ever changes. Using Windows XP, any ideas?

Right Click on your Windows Task Bar (by the Start Button) and follow the End-User installation instructions above.

Does this use a lot of bandwidth?

hmm this is great but it would be sweet if someone could make something like this except it would be a ticker program. It gets installed when u sign yup for the forums.

I'm slow but not that slow :) I did that part already.

While typing this I figured out my mistake. I had to "unlock" the toolbar and then resize it so that the display comes up. Anyone who gives this to your users might want to mention that to them too or they might assume it doesn't work and just turn it off.

Scrooge..

Rightclick your taskbar.
Make sure the Lock the Taskbar is unchecked.
Right Click the title.
Make sure that Show Title is unchecked.
Relock taskbar.

Alternatively you can drag the window open further and it will display both.

Does this mess up the cookies when a user visits the board? Like, say I viewed a topic in the toolbar ticker, then go to the board, does it say that that topic is new?

Thanks, taking off "show title" helped a lot. Now, how do I remove the poster and number of replies as someone mentioned above? With those included it takes up half of my taskbar to have it all displayed, and if you don't display it all the annoying scroll bar appears at the bottom and gets in the way.