By a peculiar coincidence, I came across this ticker effect on a website built with Joomla! 3. Something undefined about it caught my attention and so I did some research trying to find out what it was all about. The result turned out to be a module extension with an ambiguous name and compatible only with Joomla! version 3, which led me to investigate the code to find a way to make it compatible with Joomla! 5.

A complete overhaul of the entire code proved to be necessary, but in the end the module became perfectly functional and compatible with Joomla! 5. Some fine display details have even been corrected with this occasion, other fine details may still require some adjustments in the legacy code, but as it stands now the module is stable and can be used with full success.

The weirdest thing I happen to found during the code conversion, however, is related to the module naming.

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Important:
If there is an old version of the Aixeena Ticker module that you want to reinstall as part of a Joomla upgrade from version 3 to 5 or later, then the old module must be uninstalled before instaling the new one, otherwise duplication issues may occur in the database due to the module name, which is very likely to have gotten confused over time. See the story about the module naming issue a little further down.

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1. The module file
2. Things worth mentioning
3. Weird facts about the naming of this module

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(i) The module file

The Aixeena Ticker module consist of a single .zip archive file. Depending on the chosen installation method, you either need to download the file or simply copy and paste its URL.

Method 1 (recommended): download the file on your PC

In a sense, this is a safe method from the user’s perspective, because once the file has been downloaded, there is no more dependency on this originating site – like, for example, in case my web server happens to go offline for whatever reason.

• • Download the mod_aixeenaticker_5.0.1.zip zip file

Then:

• on the J5 admin page, go to Install Extensions, the Upload Package File tab, then drag and drop there the .zip file just downloaded
• wait for the success-like message to show up (it shouldn’t take long to complete)

or

Method 2 (most convenient): use only an install URL

No need to download anything, just enter the address into the proper field. The module will be installed automatically from my web server by the Joomla! system.

Steps:

• on the J5 admin page, go to Install Extensions, the Install from URL tab, then copy and paste there this address:
  https://www.secarica.ro/dev/joomla/aixeena/mod_aixeenaticker_5.0.1.zip
• Note: this address (and, thus, the target file) is in fact the same as the link address from method 1 above, so it is safe to copy that link instead.
• click the Check & Install button
• wait for the success-like message to show up (it shouldn’t take long to complete)

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Notes:
Current module version is 5.0.1 (click here for versions history)
The software is published under the GPLv2 license.

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(ii) Things worth mentioning

It took me some time and experimentation to understand what this module actually displays by default: it is the article titles – but not their content – that are chosen and sorted according to one or more specified categories. If no category is specified, then all the article titles are displayed in a jumbled, rather chaotic manner. It is like a sort of table of contents sorted by category (or left unsorted, if no category is specified), where articles can be then displayed in full by clicking on their scrolling titles.

The more ticker rows are displayed at once on a single page, the more computational effort appears to be required from the client’s web browser, which can lead to choppy scrolling on slower PCs. For the smoothest possible scrolling experience, consider minimizing the number of ticker rows to the bare minimum

The module responds very well to page language selection in a multilanguage environment – like this very web site, for instance. To see the language change in action, notice the text language on the black scroling stripe below, then switch the page language by clicking on the other than the active flag in the language selector at the top. Page content will not change, as it is written only in English anyway.

The module is also compatible with LTR and RTL writing directions, this being a functionality already introduced at some point in one of the versions up to 4.0.0.

There is no user manual or instructions available. If you are not familiar with it, or are unsure about some configuration options, keep in mind that most options have associated brief help descriptions, which are hidden by default by the Joomla interface. To reveal them, click the “Toggle Inline Help” button in the upper right corner on the module settings page.

The actual template colours are hard coded in .css files, so if a particular template colour is needed beyond the default ones, then the .css file corresponding to the template colour selected in settings must be edited, where the .css files are located on the /modules/mod_aixeenaticker/assets/css/ server path. For example, the red scrolling stripe below is displayed based on the “Red” template selection, which in turn points to the aixwebticker-red.css file, where I changed the original red colour values from #cc0000, #00cc0000, rgba(204,0,0,0) and rgba(204,0,0,1) to #bb2019, #00bb2019, rgba(187,32,25,0) and rgba(187,32,25,1) respectively, to match exactly one of the shades of red used by my website.

The gradient mask is a nice looking effect, only that, on a case-by-case basis, one must also take into account the display on mobile devices, where the gradient can partially or even completely obscure the display of useful text on some lower-resolution portrait-oriented screens.

The only unusable option seems to be the “More news link” subcategory at the end of the module settings, because the code corresponds either to an idea that was started but never completed, or to an external extension that once was somehow related or at least intended to be related. Specifically, the original description mentions “... news link or button” (my emphasis), but no button actually exists, and the option itself, if active, overlays the given text rather awkwardly on top of the scrolling titles. I have now omitted the “or button” part from the option description, but otherwise I have not changed anything essential in that part of the code.

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(iii) Weird facts about the naming of this module

The Joomla! 3 compatible module was originally developed by Ciro Artigot for a project called Aixeena, which was focused on GNU and Open Source development. Subsequently, the module became available in the Spanish section of the Top Position website. No active demo of the module was featured, which is quite strange in itself.

Initially, on the Aixeena website, the module was published with the ambiguous names Horizontal News Ticker (mentioned as such in the linked title) and Aixeena Web Ticker (mentioned as such in the page title).

Then, on the Top Position website, there is an Aixeena Web Ticker module and another one called Aixeena Tags, where the latter also mentions the name Essential Tags somewhere on the page where a few snapshots of some settings are also presented, presumably from that respective Essential Tags module. This fact in itself would not have meant anything special, given that on the initial Aixeena web site the Essential Tags module actually existed as a distinct product, only that now, on the Top Position website, both Aixeena Web Ticker and Aixeena Tags contain practically the same code – namely, the code from Aixeena Ticker for Joomla! 3 from which I started the conversion presented here – with the unique difference that, after installation in Joomla!, Aixeena Web Ticker appears under the name Essential Tags and Aixeena Tags appears under the name Aixeena ticker (yes, small caps on ticker), although both essentially do the same thing.

Finally, at the time of this writing, the same Joomla! 3 version of the module is avaiabe at the Joomla! Extensions Directory under the name Horizontal News Ticker Marquee, which is the one that installs under the name Essential Tags.

Not that this would be of any overwhelming importance, it’s just a curiosity :)

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