LED Banner

Designed for the Yahoo! Widget Engine platform, the LED Banner widget displays a large scrolling banner on the desktop. While its primary function may not seem like much, the app integrates a wide range of settings, in order to please even picky users.

Once built into the Yahoo! Widget Engine dock, you can drag it onto the desktop to enlarge the frame and move it to any spot on the screen. Double-clicking the window stops and resumes the scrolling.

The banner can be edited from the Widget Preferences panel, along with the reload time interval and display mode (e.g. linear file or text, cyclic RSS). All text characters can be shown in lowercase, and you may even select a text file to show in the banner.

You can insert a RSS location by filling in a few fields (e.g. primary URL, start and end string) and open it in the web browser, adjust the scroll speed and pause length, customize the LED and frame colors, as well as pick the display size.

It is also possible to show the current date and time on the banner, together with various RSS feeds elements (e.g. feed name, title only, remove CDATA tags). As far as errors are concerned, you can view alert messages and log them to file for further evaluation.

LED Banner is low-demanding concerning the system resources and responds well to commands. We haven't noticed any problems throughout our evaluation, since the widget did not hang, crash or show error notifications. However, the Yahoo! Widget Engine project has been discontinued, meaning that LED Banner shall not receive any further updates.