RSS Tickers

First off, I'm pretty noob when it comes to anything web. I know some HTML and JavaScript, but not enough to solve my problem.

Anyway, I need to create a table containing an RSS ticker and four buttons at the bottom. Mousing over the buttons needs to change the RSS ticker's feed. I know enough HTML to create the table needed. I can find plenty of free JavaScript RSS tickers, and I know enough JavaScript to handle the onMouseOver stuff for the buttons too.

The part I'm getting tripped up on is how I'd change the RSS ticker's feed. I know you can issue JavaScript commands inside img/link tag's onMouseOver, but what would be the best way to do this? I was thinking that I could change the RSS ticker's feed URL variable, but it probably wouldn't update, as I imagine the ticker doesn't reload that URL every single time.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Epy

I was thinking that I could change the RSS ticker's feed URL variable, but it probably wouldn't update, as I imagine the ticker doesn't reload that URL every single time.

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I'm not familiar with RSS tickers, but googling around I'm guessing you are using a javascript one that exploits "Ajax" methods (via "the XMLHttpRequestObject"). In that case, the ticker must make a fresh request to the feed every time it includes new data -- it cannot maintain a connection. That means you should be able to change the URL used and have it switch feeds immediately.

However, that depends on how that url is set and whether the one that's set is the one that's used, etc. Look around for something to do with the XMLHttpRequest or something called something like that -- this is where the url that's used is used.

Cool, thanks

For everyone else's reference, this is what I ended up using: Javascript RSS Reader | JavaScript XML & JavaScript

You can call ReadRSS which will replace the contents of a div with the specified RSS feed.