TV Schedule

**Mladen** · 28 August 2010, 11:01 AM

Hello,

this is my first post here, and I would like to start by saying what a great forum this is. I've been reading it for a couples of months now, and I'm pleasantly surprised how knowledgeable and helpful the people here are.

I've been using Xara products (Xtreme Pro 5, Designer Pro 6, Web Designer 6) for about an year and I must say there are simply stellar. Easy to work with, still very powerful. Just love them.

Now, about my issue.

I'm building a website for a local Tv station. I'm doing pretty well so far. However, I have to add a Tv schedule. Something like what's on right now. I can't really figure this out yet. Is there something like a widget that I can use, or what are my options?
Best case scenario, for me, would be to have a schedule that updates live depending on the hour.

Thanks for any help.

Best regards,
feels good to be part of the community.

**steve.ledger** · 28 August 2010, 11:31 AM

Welcome Mladen,

It depends very much on how the TV station intends to deliver the hourly updated content to you.
I think this is the first step. Once you know the format, then you can go looking for code snippets or widgets that can parse that content and print it on your web page automatically.

**Mladen** · 28 August 2010, 11:41 AM

Hi, sledger

I'll be receiving a stream video, that I'll upload on the site. (still figuring this part out) The schedule, I think, I'll have in text format, probably for 2 days ahead.

**ajreed** · 28 August 2010, 12:41 PM

Mladen - I cannot see what country you hail from - but if its the UK then how about this for a model of a cool way to present TV schedules? Maybe more than you were aiming for - I cant imagine the complex flash that went in to this rather cool site.

http://www.zingzing.co.uk/tvlistings/

**Mladen** · 28 August 2010, 12:50 PM

^
Unfortunatelly, I'm not in UK right now. I'm currently in Bulgaria. I think I've seen this site before and it's really cool. However, I'm sure this is a colossal task to do. I think I can do it, but I just don't have the time for this. Thanks.

**gwpriester** · 28 August 2010, 05:02 PM

Welcome to TalkGraphics

I do not think that Xara is very well suited to this kind of project.

What you need is a template for the entire week with each time slot named (for example, Monday 7:00-8:00AM, Monday 8:00-9:00AM, etc.) . Then the content for each named time slot can be updated via a data base. This would require some programming. Or maybe Steve can find some free ware program that can do this.

Or

You can also build this by hand, and manually update the pages as needed. I think that most of the programming does not change and is the same for each day and each week. If this is true then you can build the schedule and then make changes as necessary. It is a lot of work, but once you complete, it will be fairly simple to make changes.