News Ticker is a fantastic way to present headlines or minor updates to your readers. The smooth scrolling effect will attract your readers and generate more clicks to your site. I am writing this tutorial as there are readers ask about this after they read my tutorial about content slider.

There are a lot of great tutorials discussing on how to implement news ticker, however most of the tutorials that i found are not really suitable for a beginner. So, i decided to use jQuery and its plugin jCarousel Lite to create a simple yet powerful news ticker.

Why i choose jCarousel Lite? it is because jCarousel Lite is a tiny but powerful plugin. Furthermore, you can easily tweak/configure it to achieve different effects. News ticker is just a sample application for this plugin.

Let’s start to create our news ticker using jCarousel Lite. Download both jQuery and jCarousel Litebefore we can start.

news-ticker

Step 1

Let’s create a blank index.htm file, and include jQuery and jCarousel Lite. Also, create a blank style.css file for later use.

<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<script src="jquery-latest.pack.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="jcarousellite_1.0.1c4.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
</html>

Step 2

In the same document, create a <div> and name it as “newsticker-demo”. Basically, this is the container for the news ticker. We will have another <div> class name “newsticker-jcarousellite”. Remember, this is very important and you will need to use the same class name when you configure jCarousel Lite.

Step 3

In the “newsticker-jcarousellite” <div>, create an <ul> element. Each news will be an individual <li>element. In this example, i had created 6 news, so i will have 6 <li> elements(but i am not going to show all). We will have the thumbnail float to the left, while the title and other information float to the right.

<li>
    <div class="thumbnail">
        <a href="#"><img src="images/1.jpg"></a>
    </div>
    <div class="info">
        <a href="http://www.vladstudio.com/wallpaper/?knight_lady">The Knight and the Lady</a>
        <span class="cat">Category: Illustrations</span>
    </div>
    <div class="clear"></div>
</li>

Step 4

After you created your <li> element, it is the time for us to configure the jCarousel. Under the <head>, add these scripts:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
$(".newsticker-jcarousellite").jCarouselLite({
        vertical: true,
        visible: 3,
        auto:500,
        speed:1000
    });
});
</script>

The script itself is pretty straight forward. The “auto:500″ means it will auto-scroll every 500ms. There are a lot of options which you can configure easily. Refer the documentation for more information.

Step 5

Basically you had done everything, except styling your content. So, just copy and paste the scripts below in your style.css file.

* { margin:0; padding:0; }

#newsticker-demo {
width:310px;
background:#EAF4F5;
padding:5px 5px 0;
font-family:Verdana,Arial,Sans-Serif;
font-size:12px;
margin:20px auto;
}

#newsticker-demo a { text-decoration:none; }
#newsticker-demo img { border: 2px solid #FFFFFF; }

#newsticker-demo .title {
text-align:center;
font-size:14px;
font-weight:bold;
padding:5px;
}

.newsticker-jcarousellite { width:300px; }
.newsticker-jcarousellite ul li{ list-style:none; display:block; padding-bottom:1px; margin-bottom:5px; }
.newsticker-jcarousellite .thumbnail { float:left; width:110px; }
.newsticker-jcarousellite .info { float:right; width:190px; }
.newsticker-jcarousellite .info span.cat { display: block; font-size:10px; color:#808080; }

.clear { clear: both; }

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