I had been using the windows btc price gadget for months and since moving on to windows 8 desktop gadgets are no longer supported, I decided I would just go ahead write my own since I'm tired of looking up all the different alt-coins and my mining stats every time I get on-line. I just thought I'd share this with the community so maybe someone else will get some use out of it as I have. This is a rather generic ticker no fancy gui, no bells and whistles, only the hard numbers just the way I like it, but on the other hand it is quite flexible and can be configured to show you just about any exchange info, mining stats, or block-chain info. When I say "just about" it's not going to extract complex nested json data requiring custom classes or parsing, it uses just a generic string parser and returns the first "key" match if found.
This is
not a windows 8 metro app, this just runs in the system tray, uses very little resources and uses a xml configuration file for setup "ticker-list.xml" is the default or can be launched with "CryptoCoinTicker.exe filename" for using different config files, also works under Ubuntu if mono-complete is installed (has a couple display quirks when removing the border but is ok once restarted and some functionality has been bypassed).
You can change the font, colors and the horizontal and vertical lay-outs in the options menu, a * will appear if the query times out or if the data has not updated. You will get a "Key Error" if the key is not found. Update interval is set at 10 minutes but can be changed as needed.
Here's a quick and dirty set-up guide:
The white spacing in the name and symbols will help line up columns if using a mono-spaced font
Normal data:
<Ticker>
<Name>BTC </Name>
<Address>https://mtgox.com/api/0/data/ticker.php</Address>
<Key>last</Key>
<Symbol>$</Symbol>
</Ticker>
No address uses the previous address above it for returning multiple items from same source:
<Ticker>
<Name>High </Name>
<Address></Address>
<Key>high</Key>
<Symbol></Symbol>
</Ticker>
For a blank line an empty Ticker block:
<Ticker>
<Name></Name>
<Address></Address>
<Key></Key>
<Symbol></Symbol>
</Ticker>
For a separator character an empty Ticker block with desired character in the symbol slot:
<Ticker>
<Name></Name>
<Address></Address>
<Key></Key>
<Symbol>---------------</Symbol>
</Ticker>
To return non-json data such as the current block count leave the key slot empty:
<Ticker>
<Name>Blocks </Name>
<Address>http://blockchain.info/q/getblockcount</Address>
<Key></Key>
<Symbol>#</Symbol>
</Ticker>
md5E:\disk\FCIV>fciv.exe CryptoCoinTicker.exe
//
// File Checksum Integrity Verifier version 2.05.
//
a2f6a70b01ba2a914629e810b40b47cf cryptocointicker.exe
Binary:
CryptoCoinTicker-BinarySource:
CryptoCoinTicker-Source