The Code Project Ticker
The Code Project Ticker
Motivation
I always want to keep myself up to date with the latest happenings at The Code Project. The problem - I can't afford to launch IE every 5 minutes to see if there are any new and interesting threads or whether there are more messages posted to a particular thread. The idea came (originally from Colin Davies) that a desk band ticker which scrolled through all the latest messages would be pretty good in this regard. This will ensure that none of the action (like a Lounge flame war) is missed when it happens.
For a change (form me) this is totally written in unmanaged C++ using ATL/WTL 7. So .NET framework runtime is not required. Even the latest MFC/CRT dlls are not required. The code makes use of the latest attributed extensions in VC++.NET and also of the new classes in ATL7 to access webservices. Later on I will add support to host .NET based addins and also normal VBScript/JScript.
How To Install
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Unzip the CPTicker_demo.zip file. This will extract one file, CPTicker.dll.
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Register the CPTicker.dll by calling
regsvr32 CPTicker.dll -
Right click on the task bar. This will show a menu as shown in the image below. From the Toolbars sub menu select "The Code Project Ticker". This will place The Code Project Ticker desk band on the task bar.
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The latest messages are shown and are periodically refreshed from the website.
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Clicking on any message will launch IE and navigate to the message thread view.
