Fwurg

[Brend]

To those interested, I have made a test of a news ticker based on the Union Central News thread: UCN ticker. (It displays the last 15 news items)

As I do not know where this should be integrated in the site, I'll keep it around as a test for now. If you have a great idea, do tell!

[Dragonmaster352]

nice.

Maybe directly below the page title?

[Elmer]

Maybe in the homebar with the links to the forum, wiki, rules tools etc. There is room. Other possible locations are somewhere around the banner, or below the 'x messages' box.

Looks nice though. :)

[Mercury]

I'd display it a little bit slower (it goes pretty quickly right now) and perhaps only the past 5 items instead of the past 15.

As for a location... maybe display it only in the IC forums at the top?

[Brend]

I played around with the paramters of timing and number of items already. 5 seemed a bit on the low side, as you get a repeat of your news very fast. I've also played with the idea of showing at most a weeks worth of news, but with the current news speed this is a tad questionable. I'll try some other settings over the week, and let you know.

There is at least one thing that I found very interesting: every time I look at the news ticker, and I see something that has a serious title it reminds me of the fact that there is a lot going on in FWURG. So, I'll try and see whether it is possible to get other sources of news in the ticker. That way we could make an 'Union Central News - Economics' thread where people can drop announcements of their deals and such, so others have better awareness of whom produces and sells what.

[Brend]

I've tried putting the news ticker in all the IC forum overviews, just below the title of the forum. And I've put the delay to 8s (it was 5s).

The reasoning was that if you're actually looking at a thread, you scroll down a bit, and don't look at the top at all. Besides, I don't want the news ticker to intrude on Jedi missions and such. But to be honest, I think it mostly cluttered up the top of the site, and didn't have enough exposure over there.

So, as an experiment, I put it on the 'front page' of the site (which, at the moment is the forum page for most people, I guess). Furthermore, I changed it to display the last 10 items. What do you think?

(Don't forget to ctrl+f5, or some other ritual you need to do the refresh your cache!)

[Elmer]

I saw it.

I like the ticker, it is creates an increased feeling that stuff is happening. But as it is at the front page, I would say 5sec delay and 15 items. People do not stay that long on the forum page I think so the ticker can be a little bit fast.

Sadly, the styling at this moment is not conform with the styling of the forum, so it looks a bit weird. Maybe a slider (from right to left) without the blue fits better in the lay-out. (Although, the ticker is very catchy now ^_^)

[Chriz]

Randomize the starting order to make sure you see different items. When you are a fast user, the only thing you will ever see now is the first item...

[Brend]

Sadly, the styling at this moment is not conform with the styling of the forum, so it looks a bit weird. Maybe a slider (from right to left) without the blue fits better in the lay-out. (Although, the ticker is very catchy now ^_^)

Agreed. The styling will be worked on to make it fit better in the whole of the sites design.

Randomize the starting order to make sure you see different items. When you are a fast user, the only thing you will ever see now is the first item...

That would also be a nice touch, though it does away with the 'inverse chronological order' the ticker uses right now. Maybe this is less important of there are just 5 items in there. I'll try it.

[Elmer]

The ticker is more in style with the rest, though it still doesn't feel right to me... (sorry for the criticism)

Can you make the transition smooth? like what is used in the news sometimes. And I think it works better if the ticker use the entire width of the screen.

One bar above and one bar below the text line, from side to side of the screen with a slightly more solid appearance than the current box. The text scrolling in a constant velocity, maybe the different news items separated with a square an the text a little larger. How does that sound? I think it is worth the try.

[Brend]

The ticker is more in style with the rest, though it still doesn't feel right to me... (sorry for the criticism)

Criticism is good. Criticise me as much as you want. Criticism with argumentations are especially welcome.

Can you make the transition smooth? like what is used in the news sometimes. And I think it works better if the ticker use the entire width of the screen.

One bar above and one bar below the text line, from side to side of the screen with a slightly more solid appearance than the current box. The text scrolling in a constant velocity, maybe the different news items separated with a square an the text a little larger. How does that sound? I think it is worth the try.

Though that sounds extremely cool, but it is also much more difficult to program... I can change the bar to full-width easily, but the continuous movement will be more difficult. Of course, now that it's a challenge I must try my hand at it ^_^

Stand by, this might take a while.

[Elmer]

yeey, it is sliding now. It is looking great ^^

[Brend]

It's also eating up a lot of your CPU just for the sliding animation.

Though it works, it is not very nice for the batteries of your laptop or tablet.

[Brend]

The animation seems to stutter a bit as well, though that might just be my browser failing on me.,

[Elmer]

yes, I noticed the cpu part as well. I thought the stuttering was a result of the CPU consumption.

[Elmer]

When you zoom out completely, the bar stops because it runs out of headlines to show. Just stating, I don't think this requires fixing.

[Brend]

@Elmer: That has been fixed.

@Everyone: However, due to technical issues with some browsers (read: phones with crappy browsers), and due to the current CPU load, I will be disabling the news ticker for now. I'm open to people proposing solutions for the the technical issues, as the ticker had a good feeling of 'busy-ness' to it.

[Brend]

I've put back some of the functionality. Please ignore the red box that says 'Ignore me!'.

[Brend]

(ctrl+f5 before you read this post)

I have tried a new layout for the news ticker, it is now viewable only on the forum front page, and it is neatly put with the IC forums.

Notes:

• The grey rectangle is a placeholder for the UCN logo that I plan to put there (if I can get the source logo from Mercury, otherwise I'll have to recreate it later).
• The movement is now linear, and the movement speed is no longer affected by the length of the news item. (i.e. if it moves, it moves at the same speed as the previous item.)
• The ticker contains the last 10 items, and starts ticking from a randomly chosen item.
• The location icons might have to be changed later on to show either the news source (UCN, UCNZ, CCN, etc.) or they could be used to display the faction logo of the reporter... Haven't decided yet.

As always, your criticism, comments and opinions are most appreciated.

[Brend]

As the uniformity of the newsticker takes precedence over having a visual indication of only a few locations, I have removed the small logos. Some news items had them, and some did not. This caused a slightly chaotic display.

[Elmer]

interesting location. I do not know yet what location I like better.
The fade in on the right is awesome, the fade out on the left (the UCN placeholder) I'm not sure yet. I will let it brew for a weekend :)

[Brend]

It won't remain gray...

[Mercury]

I liked the little icon, and I think you should consider scrolling vertically instead of horizontally.

[Brend]

I liked the little icon, and I think you should consider scrolling vertically instead of horizontally.

When scrolling vetically, the icon will be back for sure. It just cluttered up the horizontal ticker.

I'll try the vertical one again later.

[Brend]

I have updated the newsticker to its umpteenth incarnation!

• It is vertical again
• It now features a UCN logo in the new UCN styling I am working on

Better or worse?