A Better Annoucements Ticker

A while back I did a post about how to make a vertical news ticker, in the comments several people pointed out problems with the code so I decided to write a better version of the code. Here it is.

New Ticker

For this ticker I started out with a default Annoucements list. Because I wanted to display a thumbnail for each annoucement I added a signle line of text column called Subtitle and a Picture column called Picture. Here are the columns I used.
List Columns

Here is the basic structure of the ticker.

<div id="actions">
<a class="prev">« Back</a>	<a class="next">More pictures »</a></div>
<div class="scrollable vertical">
    <div class="items">
      <div class="item">
           <img src="#" alt="Thumbnail Image" />
           <h3>Title</h3>
          <strong>
              <span>Subtitle Text</span>
          </strong>
        <p>First 200 Characters of the body</p>
       <p><a href="#">Read more</a></p>
    </div>
   </div>
</div>

Below is the xsl code I used to build the ticker.


<Xsl>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xsl msxsl ddwrt" xmlns:ddwrt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" xmlns:ddwrt2="urn:frontpage:internal">
	<xsl:output method="html" indent="no"/>
	<xsl:decimal-format NaN=""/>
				<xsl:param name="dvt_apos">'</xsl:param>
				<xsl:param name="url_PATH_INFO" />
				<xsl:param name="url_HTTP_HOST" />
	<xsl:param name="Today">CurrentDate</xsl:param>
				<xsl:variable name="dvt_1_automode">0</xsl:variable>
				<xsl:template match="/" xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls">
					<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1"/>
	</xsl:template>
				<xsl:template name="dvt_1">
					<xsl:variable name="dvt_StyleName">Table</xsl:variable>
					<xsl:variable name="Rows" select="/dsQueryResponse/Rows/Row"/>
						<script>
$(function() {
	$(".scrollable").scrollable({ vertical: true, mousewheel: true, circular: true, keyboard: true });
// scrollable has to match the class on the div you use to wrap your items.
});
</script> <div id="actions">
	<a class="prev">« Back</a>
	<a class="next">More pictures »</a>
</div>
		<div class="scrollable vertical">
		<div class="items">
			<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.body">
				<xsl:with-param name="Rows" select="$Rows"/>
			</xsl:call-template>
			</div>
			</div>
	</xsl:template>
				<xsl:template name="dvt_1.body">
					<xsl:param name="Rows"/>
					<xsl:for-each select="$Rows">
						<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.rowview"/>
		</xsl:for-each>
	</xsl:template>
		<xsl:template name="dvt_1.rowview">
		<div class="item">
		<xsl:if test="not(normalize-space(@Picture) = '')"><img src="{substring-before(@Picture,',')}" /></xsl:if>
		<h3><xsl:value-of select="@Title"/></h3>

				<strong>
		<xsl:if test="not(normalize-space(@SubTitle) = '')"><span><xsl:value-of select="@SubTitle " disable-output-escaping="yes" /></span></xsl:if>
		</strong>

				<p><xsl:value-of select="substring(@Body,0,200)" disable-output-escaping="yes" /></p>
				<p><a href="http://{$url_HTTP_HOST}/{@FileDirRef}/DispForm.aspx?id={@ID}">Read more</a></p>
		</div>
	</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></Xsl>

If you try to run the page with just this XSL it will give an error. You will also need to add these two lines to the parameter bindings section of your dataview web part. I used these 2 parameters to get the URL of the current page in order to built the ‘read more’ link. This is what I would call a best practice because other wise you would have to hard code the URL to your site which makes it harder for others to use your code.

<ParameterBinding Name="url_PATH_INFO" Location="ServerVariable(PATH_INFO)" DefaultValue=""/><ParameterBinding Name="url_HTTP_HOST" Location="ServerVariable(HTTP_HOST)" DefaultValue=""/>

In addition to this code you will also need to add links to these two files.

<script src="http://cdn.jquerytools.org/1.2.3/jquery.tools.min.js"></script>
/* css file to style the ticker */
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="scroll.css" />

Here is the css I used to style my ticker.

/* root element for scrollable */
.vertical {
	/* required settings */
	position:relative;
	overflow:hidden;
	/* vertical scrollers have typically larger height than width */
	height: 665px;
	width: 700px;
	border-top:1px solid #ddd;
}

/* root element for scrollable items */
.items {
	position:absolute;
	/* this time we have very large space for height */
	height:20000em;	margin: 0px;
}

/* single scrollable item */
.item {
	border-bottom:1px solid #85b1ee;
	border-top:1px solid #85b1ee;
	margin:10px 0; padding:15px; font-size:12px;
	height:180px; background:#d6e8ff;
}

/* elements inside single item */
.item img {
	float:left;
	margin-right:20px;
	height:180px;
	width:240px;
	border:5px solid #fff;
}

.item h3 {
	margin:0 0 5px 0;
	font-size:16px;
	color:#4a6499;
	font-weight:normal;
}

.item p a{padding:3px;}

.item p a:hover{ background:#fff; text-decoration:none;}

.item p { padding:3px; margin:5px;}

/* the action buttons above the scrollable */
#actions { width:700px; margin:30px 0 10px 0;}

#actions a {font-size:11px;	cursor:pointer; color:#666;}

#actions a:hover {text-decoration:underline; color:#000;}

.disabled {visibility:hidden;}

.next {float:right;}

Notes

  • The XSL is setup so that if no thumbnail is provided it will automatically adjust. The same is true if no subtitle is entered.  This is done using conditional formating.
  • Only the first 200 characters of the body are shown. To change this amount you can just change this line of code xsl:value-of select=”substring(@Body,0,200)”.
  • You do not need the whole jQuery library in order for this to run.

 

Resources

5 thoughts on “A Better Annoucements Ticker”

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention A Better Annoucements Ticker | Dave Cavins -- Topsy.com

  2. Great solution! The only problem is that the Announcement Body must be plain text (and not rich text). The reason is that the 200 character limit is applied to the rich text which comprises an initial div tag, which is missing if we break the body before the end. I could not find a solution about this so I turned the data type of “Body” to plain text.

  3. I am missing something I think to get Better Annoucements ticker to work. I have created a content editor web part, added the XML and then added the javascript line and the Style sheet line to that, and nothing working.. there is a section on this page that Horz scroll bar but no code, am I missing some code. Thank you for all your work on these solutions to help us out.. thanks

  4. Hey Dav, I m pretty much intersted with your “Better Announcement list” Article., but i m not getting that how to implement it wich webpart. Kindly , please tell me the steps to implement it , if possible. Thanx, Any help would be appreciated.

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