Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Customizing the RSS feed







I've been receiving a lot of questions on how to edit the RSS feed to whatever you like so I will explain this a little better here. Currently the only way to edit the iTicker settings are by SSHing into your phone. Hopefully this will change in a future update. For a guide on how to SSH into your phone please click here.

Once in your iPhone you'll want to navigate to the following folder: /Library/Themes

Here you will see a folder for iTicker. Open that folder and you will see a file called: Widget.html

Open up this file in notepad or any HTML editor you like such as Dreamweaver. Look for this line of code:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=5hrDg6Ir3hGzle_u6icw5g&_render=rss

Replace that URL with the URL of your RSS feed that you want to use. Here is a list of individual sports feeds you can use so only that sport displays.

MLB use: http://www.mpiii.com/scores/mlb.php
NBA use: http://www.mpiii.com/scores/nba.php
NFL use: http://www.mpiii.com/scores/nfl.php
NHL use: http://www.mpiii.com/scores/mlb.php
NCAA use: http://www.mpiii.com/scores/ncaa.php
WNBA use: http://www.mpiii.com/scores/wnba.php

If you want to have multiple feeds show for example MLB and NFL you will need to combine them into one feed. To do that please follow this guide here.

Thanks!

40 comments:

  1. Is there a way to left justify the feed on the iPhone?

    ReplyDelete
  2. To edit it you'll want to find this code in Widget.html

    .titlefield{ /*CSS for RSS title link in general*/
    color:#FFFFFF;
    font:Helvetica;
    font-family:Helvetica;
    font-size:12px;
    font-weight:bold;
    text-decoration:none;
    text-align:center;
    margin-left:59px;

    You can completely delete the margin-left line if you like. That way it will shift all the way over to the left or edit the pixels to whatever value you want and that's where the text will begin. Hope this helps!

    ReplyDelete
  3. As a follow up on my last comment, that is the exact feeds im using... http://www.mpiii.com/scores/mlb.php

    "Awesome app, great work! Is there a way to change the update rate of the feed? I have added my own sports feed that is updated every 2 minutes, but i noticed there is a 20-30 minute lag with the actual feed from the one displayed on iTicker? Tried to find the value in the jscript, but came up empty handed :("

    ReplyDelete
  4. The code uses Google's Ajax Feed API to host the desired RSS feeds on Google's servers. Bear in mind however that Google Feeds API caches the specified RSS feeds on their servers and only refreshes them around once every hour.

    Unfortunately I have no idea how to get around this. The script is set to refresh every 3 minutes or so but it's on google's end of why it sometimes it takes so long. If you can find a way to get around this PLEASE let me know it would be greatly appreciated.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I will try out some options! However, it looks like this is a problem with the feedfetcher api that google uses :( Ill keep you posted!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the usefull Script. I have modded it a bit to Display more entries, and to also highlite the Author field. This allows me to present Status updates (Twitter, Facebook) quite nicely. I am using Yahoo Pipes for deplucication and removing the Author from the Messages.

    I wonder if you can say how to control the reload/refresh of the streams. They are quite out of date here and I cant force them. Looks like Google is caching them somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Forgot the Link to the screenshot:

    http://itblog.eckenfels.net/archives/442-Ticker-auf-dem-iPhone.html

    BTW:one can test JS and CSS changes quite easy in Firefox+Firebug.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I like to thank you for this wonderfull "app" you made, it's a usefull adittion to the iPhone screen. Bit I like to mention a bug. The text is not really centered, it looks like you put some space before the text than really center the whole text. The consequence of this is long words will be displayed on a 2nd line even if there's enough room. I got a pic for you:

    http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8082/img0002gxc.png
    http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/1143/img0003xcp.png

    ReplyDelete
  9. Geart app! I love this ticker. Maybe I missed it but is there away to turn it on and off without going into Winterboard and unloading it? Cant wait for your next one.

    ReplyDelete
  10. For the google API stuff you can try these links and see if they help. That's the one thing there seems to be no fix for as the feeds update once an hour. I like your customization, well done!

    http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxfeeds/documentation/

    http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxfeeds/signup.html

    Please read my above comments about editing positioning for feeds to display on one line. You need to edit the margin-left:59px; code.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I have a question when I try to open Widget.html into TextEdit. The message: "Couldn't find BBEdit to launch Widget.html." comes up every time i try and open it or edit it with TextEdit. Is there anyway around this? Would some other application work better?

    ReplyDelete
  12. That's curious, I use Dreamweaver for all my editing you could give that a whirl. Any editor should work no problem though.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Excellent application.. just a side note to the person that did this modification (http://itblog.eckenfels.net/archives/442-Ticker-auf-dem-iPhone.html) I wonder if was able to share his code modification to highlight and add additional lines.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Very good app! Can you create a tennis feed? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  15. if there was a way to set the refresh interval that'd be great...

    fantastic app, nice work!!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Default refresh rate is set to 5 minutes. If you'd like it to edit it please see the following code,

    META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="300"

    Where 300 is the amount of seconds it takes for the content to be refreshed.

    ReplyDelete
  17. For everyone who wants to center the headlines, make the following changes in the css section:

    - .titlefield:
    change margin to: margine-left: 10px;

    - #example1:
    add: padding-top: 6px;
    add: text-align: center;

    Cheers,
    @chandavid

    ReplyDelete
  18. hi; are their any news headlines RSS, how do i find them?

    ReplyDelete
  19. hey, it is possible to duplicate the widget.html. the new one, should have a new rss adress.. so what i mean is, to have a global news rss and for example one for games, the boths should be seperated

    ReplyDelete
  20. sure just copy over everything into a second folder and name it iticker2 or whatever you want then activate it. make sure to change the positioning so the two different feeds dont overlap one another.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Do you think its possible to get twitter updates using this app?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Very nice Widget. Maybe you can make a page for people to add the rss feed pipes they create. Again... a very useful widget!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Not sure how to implement the ticker with Twitter. I do like the idea of having a site with different feeds that people create so I think I'll go ahead and make a post about that, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Can we change the amount of space between the first row of icons, and the dock? is there any way we can have the text scroll? awesome app

    ReplyDelete
  25. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I'd love to see this as a lockscreen app...?? Possible?

    ReplyDelete
  27. Google Groupled lockscreen Info with rss feeds from xsellize.com or look for lockscreen info Ll Matte with plugins add the source, go from there, feeds on the lockscreen. Two different ways, easy to setup. No app needed. I want a scrollable multicolored iTicker that is customizeable that reads Headlines and titles like on the news channel! That would b iPhone perfection. Anybody know how to impliment this?

    ReplyDelete
  28. Hi,
    I have it all set up for a news feed from the UK. I have increased the font size to 18 and the second wrapped line of text is obscured by the icons in the dock. Is there anyway I can adjust the start position for the first line of text a bit higher up the screen so the second wrapped line will then miss the icons? Hope this makes sense!

    Cheers

    Mark

    PS - great add on!

    ReplyDelete
  29. "phil said...
    Can we change the amount of space between the first row of icons, and the dock? is there any way we can have the text scroll? awesome app"

    yeah . play with it a little . change in this section

    #example1{ /*Demo 1 main container*/
    width: 305px;
    height: 15px;
    padding: 0px;
    padding-top: 6px;
    text-align: center;
    position: absolute;
    top: 369px; <--- this number - the closer to 185 . the closer to the dock icons it goes

    I like it at 375 just under the magnifying glass for my theme but like 372 looks like the center from top to bottom

    also, thanks for this ticker

    ReplyDelete
  30. Hello, my Libary folder does not have a Themes folder in it. iTicker is on my phone and everything.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous said...

    Hello, my Libary folder does not have a Themes folder in it. iTicker is on my phone and everything.

    make sure winterboard is installed...

    ReplyDelete
  32. love this app! thanks :)

    is there a way i can limit it to say 2 lines?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Is there any way to get scrolling one-line posts for longer feeds? I'm using DBar 50 and I have the first line of iTicker centered right below the weather, time, and calendar widgets (right directly at the bottom of the screen...top: 460px). Due to this, it cuts off the second line on longer ones. I've tried messing around with positioning and size and such, but most set ups look weird. Scrolling would be tight if there's a possible way!

    ReplyDelete
  34. It won't let me modify the feed. Can any help?

    ReplyDelete
  35. Agreed, scrolling would make it perfect. But i'm not complaining! I love the app anyways! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  36. Any update on the refreshing so my live scores actually come across as live?

    ReplyDelete
  37. A bit late to this, but I've tried installing this twice and the Widget.html file seems to be blank and I'm getting nothing. The Javascript files seem intact. Anyone have a valid Widget.html file?

    ReplyDelete
  38. How do i get a stock market RSS feed on my i ticker???

    ReplyDelete
  39. the nhl feed links to the mlb feed ... ????

    ReplyDelete
  40. Use iFile open as text document.

    https://github.com/takuo/iPhone/blob/master/WinterBoard/kiTicker.theme/Widget.html

    Use this link to center. U can google any other q"s

    A

    ReplyDelete

Powered By Blogger