RSS Ticker

robmiller · 14 May 2006 at 21:53

Spent yesterday afternoon writing this since I still hadn't played with some of the features in .NET 2.0:

Automatically downloads headlines from Google News every 5 minutes and displays them in a ticker format that's rewindable, pausable and fast-forwardable. You can customise the RSS feed it displays and the time limit between "ticks" by editing the .config file, but I'm going to write a little options dialogue for it too.

Download

(Requires version 2.0 of the .NET framework, which you can get here if you don't have it already)

Tell me what you think!

robmiller · 14 May 2006 at 22:10

Oh dearie me I shall hop on those right away!

Does .NET have anything in-built to convert HTML entities? I would've thought it would given its wealth of XML functions but I'll have a look.

robmiller · 14 May 2006 at 22:26

Exactly and I can't guarantee that they'll always be numeric

robmiller · 14 May 2006 at 23:03

My C# is awful

Fixed all those and updated link

robmiller · 14 May 2006 at 23:14

Inquisitor said:
edit: It doesn't seem to like Slashdot's RSS feed. Which RSS versions does it support?

AFAIK it should support any. Perhaps it's Slashdot's use of the rdf namespace; I'll look into it.

robmiller · 14 May 2006 at 23:17

You're not using the memory otherwise and it'll give it back to the system if it asks for it, so no worries.

robmiller · 15 May 2006 at 08:29

Inquisitor said:
Just had a quick look a the code... you appear to be toggling the TopMost property of the form whenever any toolstrip button is clicked... did you mean to do that?

edit: nevermind, was looking at old source code

Yah that was the accident that caused it :k

robmiller · 15 May 2006 at 16:55

Inquisitor said:
A quick note: as a general rule, all IDisposable objects should be Dispose()d of when you've finished using them, which is best done with a using block:

Code:

using (WebClient client = new WebClient()) { // stuff here }

Otherwise, you could potentially end up with a memory leak as IDisposable objects tend to be memory hogs.

kk

Inquisitor said:
Also, encapsulate your fields

Yah I'm rubbish at organising stuff in terms of layout within a class

More tips please, I don't get to flex my C# muscles enough so I miss quite a bit of the best-practices stuff!

robmiller · 15 May 2006 at 17:24

Not picky, useful

robmiller · 15 May 2006 at 17:42

Watercolor

robmiller · 16 May 2006 at 20:12

Inquisitor said:
Thanks

Just dug this PDF up, which was posted here a while ago. Has some good guidelines for C# coding style, which helps keep things consistent.

Linkage

I think I might've been the one who posted it - I've certainly posted it here before

robmiller · 16 May 2006 at 20:14

Seriously it's 2006 who worries about memory anymore

robmiller · 16 May 2006 at 20:23

Inquisitor said:
Rob, you gonna update that link?
I'd quite like to use this program.

A feature request/suggestion as well, if I may! Would be good if there was some sort of notification when a new feed item is received.

It already has a balloon notification when it updates :/

robmiller · 17 May 2006 at 01:07

Ooh, now with options! Options! Enjoy.