How To #2: Custom BBCodes For IPB (Marquee)

MARQUEE Tag

 

Hi,

I'm back with yet a second tutorial on how I created the MARQUEE tag. It's working well - but at first it'll seem that the tag has caused your browser to freeze. I guess depending on the different ways that IE and Mozilla Compliant Browsers parse HTML tags - the outputs are a little different. While using FireFox, the Marquee wouldn't start scrolling till all the page elements & the page itself has FULLY LOADED. Till then, it might seem that the browser's on the verge of freezing. On the other hand, in IE the Marquee starts off rightaway - even without 100% page load.

 

Anyway, here's the code:

<div id="marquee" style="width:600px; border: solid 1px #000000;"><marquee direction={option}>{content}</marquee></div>

As you can see, I've placed the Marquee within a <div> tag and specified a fixed width - to keep the Marquee safely embedded in your post and not expand and push the right border of your post out of the page. I've left the height unspecified, so that the <div> can expand on it's own to fit your text. Also I've given this box a 1-pixel wide Black Border as you can make out from the style="..." attribute of <div>.

 

The {option} here takes the direction of the Marquee (left, right, up, down) and passes it on to the HTML <marquee> tag. The {content} that is your textual content between the [ MARQUEE ] [ /MARQUEE ] tags, is placed here between actual HTML <marquee> tags. Just inspect the code a little carefully - there's hardly anything to explain about this. It's fairly self-evident.

 

Have fun

how do you add javascript or php to a BBCode. Does the BBCode just consist of html like any other webpage except it has variables {option} and {content} or do you have to do something special to get the javascrpt to start?

Nope. nothing special needed. And yea, {content} and {option} are just two variables here which wouldnt be available in normal HTML. The BBCode parser takes those two and combines them with normal HTML Code. I explained a little more here: http://forums.xisto.com/topic/82574-topic/?findpost=

Am I the only one who detests marquees? They are really annoying. They dont move smoothly and its annoying when people have large amounts of text, you miss the first few words and you have to wait 1 minute before it comes round again.

I don't mind them, but I think they are going the way of the blink code. I think now that flash is taking over and animated gifs are easy to use and almost everyone can view them, simple animation like marquee and blink are no longer needed or wanted. As a BBCode, I think it may be overused by people, or it may not be.