麻豆社

How about having your ticker code embeddable on other site's web pages?

Also, if you do make an embeddable object for other web pages, to replicate the style, font and colours of the "bar" at the bottom on the 麻豆社 News Channel would be fitting...

As long as it doesn't slow the site down even more then it sounds promising.

If it does slow it down more then I'd rather you didn't. The 麻豆社 news website is getting slower and slower due to all the embedded flash your're using. Much more slower and I'll be looking elsewhere for news

Finally! Not being able to stop or rewind the ticker used to be very annoying. Thanks for doing it.

And madclarinet; there's always the 'low graphics' version of 麻豆社 News Online. Very quick, no flash, and still the same news!

I'm very pleased to see this change - I participated in a survey about the 麻豆社 News website a few months ago and complained about the inability to click on a story on the old ticker that was still being 'typed'. Glad to see the feedback being taken into consideration :)

@madclarinet Much of the 麻豆社's use of new visual technologies online has not been Flash, despite its appearance; they're using JavaScript with jQuery, which actually uses less memory than the same effect rendered using Flash. Good news for everyone!

I'm glad you have the left & right arrows. The reveal is /way/ too slow - I get bored waiting for it!

Seriously...faster reveal please - just use the pause between stories to give people time to read it. Don't leave us hanging on every word waiting for it to be displayed. The information is the interesting thing here, not the way it's presented. Another example of style being seen to be more important than content?

Great idea! More in-keeping with other news services and much more informative.

The pause/next/previous buttons are a little ugly, though.

about damn time!

however, I do agree with madclarinet that the speed of the site should be a priority. It's why I use this site as my primary source of news and why I have it set as my homepage.

Just re-read my comment #5 above, much more critical than I meant it to be. Other than tweaking the reveal speed, I think it's a great improvement. Keep it up...just faster :)

I'd really like to see you revisit your style guidelines for news headlines - I use an RSS reader and sometimes the 麻豆社 News story headlines are like a cryptic crossword clue ! They are phrased as if you're writing newspaper headlines, but I think you can afford to be a bit more wordy with the story headlines, and make them a bit easier on the reader.

Also, I'm not sure why every line in a story has to be in it's own paragraph. It makes it harder to read for me.

petrot (Comment 3)

I know there is a low graphics version but the speed of the site is important. I'm on a very fast network at work and on a 10Mbs connection at home.

The site is slowing down a lot - I'm all for such stuff like the embedded audio, but not at the reduction in page loading that I'm seeing. The page loads but its still a short time before I'm able to scroll the page or anything - it gets annoying.

Part of my job is creating webpages/web based systems. People who use them often comment on how fast they load.

SundayParkGeorge (5) - yep agree that it's far too slow. Great to have the reveal, but it should be faster than average reading speed. I don't want to have to wait. It's the same with the ticker on the 麻豆社 News Channel - far too slow.

The changes are great though!

Much better Steve.

Though now that you've put those back/forward arrows in, I find myself clicking them immediately to see all the headlines, rather than waiting for the reveal.

It's inevitable I suppose!

The header image and text gets highlighted in Safari when you use the controls in the right hand side. Apparently, this happens in Chrome too.

Steve:

Congrats on the new format of the news ticker....

~Dennis Junior~

New ticker is irritatingly slow.

New ticker is apparently much better than before it was.Really make Breaking news more highlighted.

Well, the ticker is more prominent, but from my point of view that's not a good thing. I've never seen the point of having this feature, I can't see what it adds in terms of either content or usefulness to the reader.

Of the 'Latest' and 'Breaking News' items running at this moment, all link to stories elsewhere on the news site, a couple are already in the 'Other Top Stories' links, however none of them are important enough to appear on the main page in their own right.

It's a news site so I expect 'breaking news' as a matter of course, and I trust the 麻豆社 as an editor to make sure new and important stories are shown on the front page as soon as possible.

Would like to have an option to turn the ticker off!

@Gee4orce
I once heard that the website headlines are short because ceefax is also generated from the same database.

I like the principle of this update but the slow type is quite frustrating and probably unnecessary.

I would prefer the text all appearing from above in one go, more like a vertical scroll.

Definitely an improvement that we can back up now, but I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't read this blog post! First of all, the buttons are off at the edge and not obviously associated with the ticker, and more importantly, I don't always maximise my windows, and the buttons aren't even visible in that case. So, it's better, but to make it better still you should think a little more about the interface....

SundayParkGeorge: If you hover your mouse while the text is appearing it will all come up instantly.

Good job, I like the new look.

One thing that always bugged me was breaking stories that don't yet have an article link to the home page... maybe don't make them a hyperlink, it avoids the needless page refresh. I've yet to see a breaking story on the new ticker.

How about you exclude any articles older than 2 years from the most read/shared/etc. lists? Nothing aggravates me more than clicking some headline in the most read list only to find it's some archaic article from 2004 or 2002. It's not news anymore, it's history, and if I wanted to read archives I'd seek them out myself. Even 2 years is a compromise, but better than the current situation.

Hopefully the changes will propagate to the mobile news versions. Why we need a mobile version for 3G handsets is beyond me these days, best to give us a choice? there's not even a link to the sports site from the mobile news page.

Here are a few changes I'd like to see:

1. The ability to post comments on all news stories.

2. Peer moderation on HYS rather than 麻豆社 thought policing.

3. The ability to reply directly to other peoples comments and create threads like a proper forum.

Chances of any of those happening? Slim to non-existent.

Ticker looks great.

One suggestion I have though is for Breaking news to be a separate bar, rather than included in latest news. So if a story breaks, the latest news ticker moves down and the breaking news one appears above it. Just my 2p.

On second* glance the speed did seem a bit slow, but the navigation aids to move forward and back (as well as the 'insta-reveal' by mousing over) strike me as more than adequate if I'm in a hurry.

I noted it was my second glance to point out that the change was not glaring or overbearing to my eye. While it seems a bit slow it would be _much_ worse if it were too fast as that would be distracting.

Good Show. The 麻豆社 News website continues to set the mark for serious news delivery in my opinion.

Not a bad idea in principal - but as an international user, accessing the site in an office environment I really don't want to click through to a video.

BTW why are most of the default pages (e.g Technology/Economy/Companies etc) on the international site obsolete at the moment????

@blade82(21)
Great tip thanks :) Can just click the right and left buttons too to get at the information more quickly.

Seems to somehow defeat the purpose of the typical non-interactive ticker though - and you can often get left with it paused by mistake.

Still, a great improvement, only spoilt for me by this one irritation that niggles whenever I look at it!

I have no problem with the buttons being off to the edge like that. God knows you've already made enough concessions for these people who choose not to open their browser fully! The buttons are not "essential content" by any stretch of the imagination, so off to the right is fine.

May as well add, while I'm here...

When are you going to replace those awful icons that sit at the bottom of every news page (Email news - Mobiles - Alerts - News feeds - Podcasts... )? Apart from being dull, they really do look dreadful when reduced to that size, with jagged edges. Can't you get your design team to come up with something more slick and modern?

I had the old ticker at the top of my screen (jammed in via active desktop). I only knew that there was a change as the old one was jammed at the story about the 2 year old and the TV. Any chance that could be updated to let others know things have changed?

Unfortunately it is not so easy to stick the new one on my desktop.

I have, however, managed to hack a little something together that lets me put the new one up, but it fails to let me open links on it.

Could you
a) Put it back in a frame (preferably the old frame name) so I can easily put it on my desktop.

b) Have a nice way to turn off the big red animated headline thing from moving up and down on the screen as I fear it will prove irritating soon.

Thanks

The LATEST heading appears not to be compatible with Clear Type. I have had it go all blurry on my monitor at work.

I for one don鈥檛 like the revel. Previous, the characters appeared to be 鈥渢yped鈥� revealing the next letter all in one go 鈥� like ye olde time tickers.

Now the underscore slides along revealing the characters like the blind date screen reveal. If you鈥檙e going to include this reference to the old days of news delivery, then the detail needs to be right.

If you鈥檙e going to revolutionise it, then do something drastic, like copy the scrolling text from 麻豆社 News Channel. After all isn鈥檛 the 麻豆社 all about have a uniform look so viewers can be in no doubt about where they鈥檙e getting there news from?

The ability to pause, fast forward and rewind, along with click on the link before it finishes typing are all welcomed features. Something about the text makes it appear more dominate/chunky which I鈥檓 not sure is a good thing.

I agree with lookout (post 32) that it isn't quite right with the new style text reveal. Ticker type was a character at a time.

Also I'm getting two different front pages. When I fired up the main news page I got the UK version. I've since reloaded it and have the international version. Both, I believe, are from the same web address, just that some fancy script works out what I get depending on my IP address.
I'm up in sunny Aberdeen, but our company proxy comes out in Holland, making me look like I'm outside the UK.

How do I force it to be the UK version without setting up some proxy server?

And do we have limits on what exactly is 'Breaking news' and should be highlighted in red?

Eg, this is currently up:
"BREAKING NEWS:English hospital admissions for assault with sharp objects fell 8% between 2007 and 2008"

I'd hardly count a statistic of historical information as something that should be so prominently marked.

I agree with comment #9 on almost cryptic feed headlines. As it stands I often open an item only to realise I'm not at all interested in it, but I'm sure this must apply backwards in as much as I must overlook cryptic headlines that don't make their story clear that I might be interested in after all. Just give us the same headline in the feed as you do on the linked story.

I like the new ticker, but it'd look a lot less cluttered of the play/pause, previous and next buttons only appeared on hover. (Because most people will mouseover the ticker to click and then find that it zipps to the next headline, IMO).

This actually changed a little while ago with the old one...

But I remember that the JS used to write the headlines to the page used to remember where you left the page if you went back in your browser.

That was very handy when clicking the headline links and going back to see the next one.

I know the icons make that obsolete (kind of) - but I like as little interaction as possible =P

Have to agree with #34 - I think the big shouty red 'Breaking News' bar is being overused somewhat, and consequently watering down its effect.

I honestly feel it would be better if red (which we all take to signify urgency) was reserved for important breaking news stories, rather than every breaking news story.

You will be dealing with far more urgent stories than "Inter Milan deny allegations that coach Jose Mourinho assaulted a fan" - so why diminish the importance/effect of the red bar treatment by applying it to such (relatively) trivial items?

Please, exercise more restraint in how you present breaking news. Otherwise, it just makes you appear as if you're sacrificing editorial judgment in the quest to compete with the tabloids/Sky/ITV as to who can be the most sensationalist.

Steve, can you tell me/us how to disable this new ticker? Perhaps you could offer a disable option (via setting a cookie so that it remains disabled when the page is reloaded) along with all the other control buttons. Sorry but this re-styled ticker really is not needed, it's distracting, it's simply yet more 麻豆社 dumbing down.

Treat people like imbeciles and in time they will become imbeciles...

If disabling it is not possible then I'm sure that I won't be the only person finding a new news source and home page.

I embedded the old ticker at the top of some of the pages via an iFrame on our company intranet. It seems rather harder to do this with the new version. Will there be an option to do this or do I have to find another ticker?

Just another thought. The old ticker is still there at: but it isn't being updated any more. It's still showing stories from 10th March.

Is there any chance you can continue to update it, then I can carry on as before. You could even give users the choice of whether to use the new version or the old one.

Yay, the old ticker address is showing the new ticker.
My desktop is happy again.

Thanks

I would like to repeat earlier requests for the ability to turn off this feature. I found the original ticker reasonably unobtrusive, but the new red "Breaking News" banner is very distracting.

I don't actually need to know the latest news the moment it happens. I'd rather wait a few hours and then read a comprehensive, well-written report. The trend towards speed over accuracy or quality that has been seen on rolling TV news for some time has now spread to the website, and I don't like it.

dross2 (43) - I think those of you who find a little red bar at the top of the page distracting will be hugely in the minority. Most people want things to be flagged better - which this has done.

And surely it SHOULD be distracting! Isn't that the point?

If you'd rather read a comprehensive well-written report, buy a newspaper and leave the rest of us to get on with the 21st century.

I'd actually like to call for something more to distract these people... the Cheltenham Gold Cup has just had an amazing result - wouldn't it be great if this could appear in the ticker highlighted in 麻豆社 Sport yellow?

Thanks from me too for linking the old ticker address to the new version. A few tweaks of my iFrame size and it's looking better than ever.

One little quirk you may want to look into is that in an 800x30 iFrame, which is how I insert the ticker into my pages, Frefox displays the headlines all OK but it does not display the Navigation Icons on the Right Hand Side. The same page in IE6 shows the Navigation Icons.

#44

We are no asking for it to be removed, just a users defined option to disable it!

Exactly; if you like it then good for you, but I don't and want the option of disabling it.

Your Cheltenham Cup comment is a great example. I could not care less about the Cheltenham Cup if I tried, so why should I have to have a bright red or yellow box and moving text telling me about something I'm not interested in whilst I look for articles that I am interested in? I want to be my own judge of an article's importance.

re 48 and others

Quite frankly, what is the point of a ticker on a web page/site (were the news item can be found anyway and if it can't such scant information that can be fitted into a single line of text could cause panic [1]), it would be better if the 麻豆社 allowed this feature to be user disabled - using a persistent cookie [2] - and invested some time so that it could offer it as a desktop application were it's value would be far greater.

Sorry but these news ticker are and have always been somewhat of a gimic.

[1] take the recent 'school' bus crash, that got put up as BREAKING NEWS ticker but with no real information - result, every parent in the area probably started to panic

[2] has anyone else noticed that the "Pause" button doesn't last past a page reload.

Any chance of removing that 1 pixel dark red line at the top of the ticker from the version at ?

It looks odd unless you're using the same colour scheme.

This morning's "breaking news" is that Joseph Fritzl has arrived in court for the start of his trial. This is not newsworthy because there is nothing more to be said until the trial actually starts. It also isn't breaking news because the trial was scheduled weeks ago. The banner is just an irritation.

#51

I don't think that anyone is listening, typical of the "We know best" attitude that is all over the mass media these days, thus the dumbing down will continue because they are now believing their own spin and tabloid hype - that comedy spoof, 'BROKEN NEWS' had it about right.

The way the media is all over the Joseph Fritzl trial has more in common with the old style 'Freak-show' than any else...

The red flash is getting annoying.
It came on to say a murder conviction was quashed.
It then came on red to say he was '"ecstatic"' his conviction was quashed.
I would have thought the big red "look at me!" banner would be reserved for the kind of thing that would cause a newsflash on 麻豆社1/radio.

Hi! Great ticker, but it uses about 50% cpu on my machine! OK, so it isn't a very powerful machine, but it is very very green!! Is there any chance of giving an option to switch the ticker off?
Thanks.

Just noticed the new Products and Services icons at the bottom of the news pages.

Since I complained about the previous batch a couple of times, it's only fair that I also post to tell you I think these are an improvement!

As mentioned above, I embed the page at into an iFrame on a couple of my sites and this works well, but I've noticed that the news links open within the iFrame if anyone clicks on them. They previously opened in a new page or tab. Is there any chance of adding "target="_blank"" to your links so they open in a new window?

Is it possible to turn the news ticker off completely? It causes regular, rapid CPU fluctuations up to 100% (Task Manager CPU Usage graph looks like a sawtooth) the system fans end up at top speed to cope with it-it has taken me ages to find out what was causing the problem, now I can replicate it easily by stopping and starting the ticker. I use the 麻豆社 News site as a home page (not for much longer)and it is really annoying to have to stop the ticker every time I open my browser(IE8 or Firefox-same problem)or return home. I'm using a Dell Precision mobile workstation so its no slouch.

#57

"It causes regular, rapid CPU fluctuations up to 100%"

Totally agree, the ticker should now be an option, it's a resource hog.

I think you are over-using the red shouty news ticker, as I suspected would happen (the same occurred when you opted to start using 'occasional' bigger pictures on the homepage for the 'occasional' big story)

Currently, your ticker reads:

[IN RED] THAILAND PROTESTS: Arrest warrants issued against ex-PM Thaksin and 13 other alleged protest leaders

[IN RED] BREAKING NEWS: Father of man held in anti-terrorism operation in England says son no links to extremism

[IN RED] BREAKING NEWS: Man jailed for nine years for contaminating food and wine with urine and faeces

[NORMAL] LATEST: The European Commission starts legal action against the UK over ad service Phorm

[NORMAL] LATEST: Damian McBride will not get any severance pay, says PM's official spokesman

Steve and others... can we rest assured that you are aware of the potential danger in overusing these tools, that emphasis only works when emphasis isn't the norm, and that these things (bigger main story images and fades, red tickers) aren't just another example of the trend towards news presentation designed to appeal to the gut?

Gut appeal is a staple of tabloid papers and tabloid websites like Sky News, but I would hate for the 麻豆社 News website to be pulled down to its level.

#38 #46
Minor niggle, the ticker pause etc buttons sometimes cover the ticker message.

I guess you use the same headlines over many systems and maybe even over teletext etc but it would be nice to be able to read all of the ticker, rather than have it continue under the buttons and maybe off the screen.
Are there any plans to improve this.

I am using firefox 3.0.9 browser. This happens with ticker messages of length over about 80 characters. My browser window does show the full width of your news page. As a workaround I sometimes block the display of the button images so I can see more of the ticker.

I think you are over-using the red shouty news ticker, as I suspected would happen (the same occurred when you opted to start using 'occasional' bigger pictures on the homepage for the 'occasional' big story)

I agree with these words

Does anyone know why I get the error:

! An error has occurred in the script on this page
Line 39
Char 21
Error Object required
Code 0
URL /includes/blq/resources/gvl/r61/script/blq_core.js

When I have on my active desktop? It pops up everytime the desktop refreshes and everything works normally after I hit OK or Cancel.

Its only been doing it for the last few months.