vBulletin Taskbar Ticker

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.

[Streicher]

Hmm, i have logged in with my testuser and the posts in the private forums are still present.

[Streicher]

A small modificatons to link direct to the first unread post

Find:

$bburl/showthread.php?s=&threadid

Chance to:

$bburl/showthread.php?s=&goto=newpost&threadid

A second modification i have made is to save the same file under a new name (ticker.php) and upload it, too.

Before uploading find in both files ticker.php and ticker2.php:

ticker.php?off=true" target=_self>

and change it to:

ticker2.php?off=true" target=_self>

Remove in ticker2.php:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="180">

Then the page is not reloaded, until the user reactivate the ticker. And the user also disappears from "Who is online" after the cookie timeout.

[ptbyjason]

I uploaded an on and off image and put it in my folders, but they won't show up. Vbulletin's ticker's images won't show up either. Does anyone know why?

I really wish there was a way to put this in the IE progress bar at the bottom of the browser. I don't think that is possible, but that would be great.

[Streicher]

You have to edit the path for the images:

Try http://www.domain.com/forum/images/on.gif

instead of: images/on.gif

[ptbyjason]

Worked great. Thanks man.

[andrew67]

It seems you need right click and hit refresh for it to update.. Is this correct?? otherwise its just the same 10 threads over & over again.. Is there a way to make it auto refresh??

[ptbyjason]

I might be wrong, but I think it refreshes every 3 minutes.

Does anyone know if it will work on Windows NT? I have a member who cannot get it to work. They said there is no place to select "Toolbars" when they right click.

[wot-Mike]

About the images, in ticker.php the path is set to "/images", which is wrong if your images folder is a subdir of your forumdir. It should be just "images", without the slash thing in front of it.

And it works in Windows 2000. It might not work with an older browser version

[ptbyjason]

If you view Who's Online it messes up the location of the user. Does anyone know a way to prevent the Who's Online to appear normal. I've attached the image of me using the ticker and viewing the Who's Online.

[CB_Tommy]

I think the hack is really usefull, but whats about

• a way to change the mode for e.g. the desktop or the taskbar (mode=taskbar or mode=desktop)
• a possibility to send the ticker into standby, because there isn't allways the need, that the ticker is runing
• a way so that the user can change the text size (on high resulutions 8pt is somewhat small)

Just my ideas