Ticker Strip 1.0

© 2000 Vortimac Software

What is Ticker Strip?
Requirements
Installation
Using Ticker Strip
Registering

Requirements

Installation

All you need to do is drag the three icons named Ticker Strip, Ticker Strip Control, and Ticker Strip Extension into the System Folder on your startup disk. Once this is done, you'll need to restart. Upon restart, Ticker Strip will be ready to accept your quote requests!

Using Ticker Strip

Ticker Strip is very easy to use. Of the three files that were installed in your System Folder, you'll only need to interact with one, the Ticker Strip Control. It is through this control panel that you control every aspect of how the stock ticker works. To set up Ticker Strip, open up Ticker Strip Control in your Control Panels folder. You will be presented with a window that looks something like this:

Here's an explanation of what all these options mean:

Ticker speed: This is the speed at which the ticker scrolls. We've found that slower speeds yields smoother scrolling.

Ticker width: This tells the Control Strip how much space you want the ticker to take up.

Quotes updated: If you'd like the quotes to be automatically refreshed, leave the "Manual updates only" box unchecked. The slider lets you choose a refresh frequency, from 1 to 120 minutes. You can manually update quotes any time, by pressing the command key and clicking on the stock ticker in the Control Strip.

Quote colors: This lets you choose what colors to use when a stock is rising, falling, or neither. You can set these to whatever colors you like simply by clicking on the color boxes.

You'll also notice that there are two tabs near the top of the window. The preferences tab lets you set up those options we just discussed. When you click on the Stocks tab, you are presented with a window like this:

To add stocks to the stock sticker, just click on the Add button in the lower left corner of the window. You should verify that the symbols are correct before you add them, but Ticker Strip will notify you if they are incorrect when it tries to look them up. You should also be careful not to enter duplicate stocks. Once you've entered a stock symbol, you can later edit or delete the symbol by selecting the quote from the list and pressing either the Edit... or Delete button.

Once you have entered several stock symbols, Control Strip Control should look like so:

Now, take a look at the stock ticker in the Control Strip. It should look something like this:

That's all there is to it! As pointed out previously, you can update all the quotes by command-clicking (that's the open apple and a click) on the stock ticker.

Troubleshooting

The stock ticker seems choppy, why is this?
This is an unfortunate consequence of using the Control Strip. The Control Strip only gets a small amount off processor time, which Ticker Strip uses part of to scroll the ticker. Although it is possible for us to make the ticker scroll more smoothly, it would impact performance, which we would prefer to avoid. The easiest thing to do is to slow the ticker down, which gives it a smoother look.

Why does it take so long for preferences and/or new quote symbols to show up?
This is another consequence of using the Control Strip. Since the Control Strip only gets a small amount of processor time, we only try to do a limited amount of work each time. This results in longer preference changes, but keeps our impact on performance very small.

Registering