Figure 11-1: The 7amcom News Ticker service presents news to your visitors in a marquee format in Java

Generating PDF 417 in Java Figure 11-1: The 7amcom News Ticker service presents news to your visitors in a marquee format

The 7amcom News Ticker is a Java applet that presents a series of scrolling headlines in a text box on your site Visitors to your site click a headline that interests them and go to a page displaying the full story The stories come from various sources, so the page that a visitor goes to may be located at any news site from CNN to the BBC To add the News Ticker to your pages, follow these steps: 1 Go to 7amcom/ticker/addtickerhtml and copy the HTML code in the text area (see Figure 11-2) 2 Paste the code into your Web page at the place where you want the News Ticker to appear 3 Scroll down to the All Users area and take a look at the parameter options you can add 4 With the target parameter, indicate whether you want the linked page to open in the current browser window, in a new window, or in a named frame The example code for this is <param name= target VALUE= _blank >, which opens the news link in a new window Simply replace _blank with the name that you gave to the desired window or, if you want the link to open in the current browser window, don t specify any target parameter

5 If you want to enter a headline and URL for something you want to advertise, use the local and link parameters This is a free opportunity to add your own private advertising to the 7amcom News Ticker, so don t neglect it You can add up to four separate Web pages here Set the headline that you want to appear first as the value of local1 and the URL of the Web page you want to associate with that headline next as link1 , as in the following example code:

You can have up to four local headlines The ads run in the ticker just like the ones that 7amcom News has, and your visitors can t tell any difference These ads show up only on your Web page, though they don t go out with the 7amcom News broadcast to its other member sites That s why they re called local headlines 6 To change the headlines font to normal or bold, add one of the following lines to the code:

7 To set the number of seconds the ticker waits before changing headlines, add the pause parameter:

The default setting is 4 seconds 8 To make the headlines appear nonsequentially, add the random parameter:

9 When you re satisfied with the parameters and values you ve set, upload your page to your Web server

I figure that most of the people on the Net spend almost all their free time indoors, but amazingly, they still maintain a fascination with what s happening outside Okay, I admit that I have to drive through the outside world sometimes, and the guys from marketing often take their laptops and cell phones to the beach to work But all you really need to know is whether a thunderstorm is coming your way, right And if that bright flash and the sudden puff of smoke from your modem don t tell you that, what can Still, you just can t please some folks, and if your visitors want to check out the latest weather conditions and forecasts, who am I to stand in their way

Weather Underground (wwwwundergroundcom) has lots of ways for you to add current weather information to your Web site It has both freebies and, uh costies For some reasonably priced customized weather options for your site, you can go to Weather Underground s commercial page at www wundergroundcom/autobrandinfo To take advantage of its freebies, follow these steps: 1 Go to wwwwundergroundcom to access the Weather Underground site 2 Type your location in the text box at the top of the page (the text box is labeled Find the Weather for Any City, State, or Zip Code, or Country) Unless you enter a city name or a zip code, you don t get the option to add weather data to your page 3 Click the Fast Forecast button to get the forecast for the area you chose 4 After the forecast page appears, scroll down to find the Click Here for Your Weather Sticker link (shown in Figure 11-3) and then click it