All content © Copyright 2004-2010 John Foster
Last Edited: August 14th, 2010 16:36 UTC - Optimised for at least 800x600
The light-weight Ticker Tape agent installed on each workstation periodically checks for messages sent out by the Ticker Tape Administrator and unobtrusively displays them at the top of the users screen, sized to ensure that the title bar and window controls of any other application displayed underneath it are still fully accessible.
The user can then choose to allow the message to scroll across the top of the screen, double-click it to view the message in a standard dialog box or easily send it to the system tray where it remains until it either times out or is replaced or cleared by the administrator.
The Agent software is specifically designed to ensure that it doesn’t ‘steal focus’ when it shows a message or affect the users ability to work in any way.
Ticker Tape is a simple way to 'broadcast' unobtrusive messages to workstations spread over one or more disparate sites - it's ideal for Help Desks or Administrators wanting to proactively advise people of issues affecting one or more locations. Ticker Tape is especially useful where other means of communication, such as email, are unavailable due to outages.
It's intuitive administrative interface allows you to choose from a range of predefined messages, construct your own or control the agent software
Ticker Tape Agent with a ‘critical’ message
The completely free unlicensed version of Ticker Tape is identical in all respects to the fully licensed version, other than it can only manage messages for up to 3 individual sites (however, each site could contain thousands of workstations). No functionality is lost and there are no annoying ‘nag’ screens to contend with!
If you wish to manage more than the 3 free Sites, there are several cost-efficient license options available, allowing you to manage up to a maximum of 21 sites which could be spread across the globe. Licensing only takes a few minutes and the received license code can be used to immediately enable additional sites in your existing Ticker Tape installation.
Agent dialog
New in version 1.2 is the ability to configure all aspects of Ticker Tape from the interface itself, allowing Sites, pre-defined messages and the look of the Agent message to be easily defined (including its font, size, colours, speed and screen width)
The new 'Live Preview' function also allows you to mimic a real Agent to see exactly how the message would look at the target workstations as its configuration is altered.
Please note that in order to use Ticker Tape, you need to be running at least Windows 2000 - it will not install on Windows 9x. Depending on your O/S, you may also need the VB6 run-time libraries installed - please ensure you refer to the Getting Started Guide (Word / PDF) and F.A.Q. (Word / PDF) for important information regarding installation and use prior to downloading.
The recommended environment for Ticker Tape is Windows XP - however it has also been tested and works on Windows 2000, 2003, Vista and 7. I hope it’ll work fine for you in your environment, but if you do encounter any problems please don’t hesitate to drop me an email or post a forum message with some details; I’ll do my best to help you.
If you have any suggestions on how to improve Ticker Tape, please let me know also - if your suggestion is incorporated into a future release, you’ll be credited in the software!
Configuration dialog
Main interface - click for larger picture
If you wish to manage more than 3 Sites with Ticker Tape, there are several cost-effective licensing options, allowing you to manage up to 21 Sites in total - a license code can be purchase following this link or via the ‘Help/Enter License Key...’ option in the Ticker Tape Administrator software. Licensing Ticker Tape is secure, only takes a few minutes and immediately enables the additional Sites in your existing installation.
Download the completely free 3 Site version of Ticker Tape with this link: