The good news is jQuery is bundled in the wordpress install so I don’t really need to worry about libraries. Although it may bite me in the ass as all the ajax runs on the client and who knows what client may come by and how that client may implement ajax…..

I think I’ll take your advice and use the php code instead of the widget to display the info. That way I can avoid all the weirdness of widgets until I get it to work. Even at that, the front page of my blog has around six php files just to display the content. Each file is loaded, does something, then calls the next bit…. so no nice < head>< /head>< body>< /body>….The head is called from Header.php, which then loads layout.php, header-extensions.php, a whack of CSS and begins the tag….then passes over to page.php, which passes to main.php, which passes to content.php which passes to sidebar.php which …..finally gets us to the footer.php and the footer support files and finally closes the < /body> tag.

All I have to do now is figure out where in this miasma of geekdom I call the damned java.

The explanation above is actually simplified…sigh.

So the trick is to have the ONAIRNOW widget update the page on a HTTP request while having some time based code that will read the current song title from the HTML file on the server and update the page using AJAX.

I think this example is similar to what you want to do: http://bit.ly/gExW

Replace the .updateme class in the example code with the onAirNowTitle id created by the ONAIRNOW widget and change the url for the jQuery AJAX call from refresh-me.php to the HTML file with the song info. I don’t think that this would require making any changes to how the ONAIRNOW widget works.

I’m pretty sure I could get this to work on a straight up web page, but I don’t know what complications Wordpress and widgets might introduce…I’m still learning.

The problem with ajax coming into the mix is that plugin on the server side just barely works with the complex theme design I have and it’s not written to readily be tweaked with java.

I’ve looked at a few java libraries (Sajax, jQuery and TW-ajax) but so far all I’ve been able to do is stop everything from loading until the song refreshes, so you most often get a blank page

Still, there’s nothing that can’t be done, right?

Do you ever wake up, get out of bed, start getting ready for work, and then about fifteen minutes later, you wake up again? And you have to start over? I hate when that happens.

Welcome back, Pris.

It’s ok to disagree with Lightly, he’s naturally disagreeable.

I liked the tune too. I found this blog trying to find it. Ironically, I couldn’t actually locate the ABC online! Is yours a transcription from the arrangement or the original? I wrote it down, but it’s hard to tell which bits are embellishments…

NB to visitors, the above isn’t well-formed ABC. It needs to start with an X: (index number) and should probably have as a minumum T: (title), M: (metre) and L: (note length).

I think I disagree with you, chopsticks. One of the great things about ABC is that whilst it’s quick to write, it can be typeset into dots easily. I would say dots are far easier to read! Each to their own I suppose.

Joe