NFL Team Schedule

You may enter a specific year via the Preferences window, or use the next and previous buttons to cycle through the years when displaying schedule information for a specific team. Currently, there is information for 2000-current year. These buttons are hidden until the mouse rolls over the widget, so if you're wondering where they are, move your mouse over the schedule and look in the lower left (or right, depending on your logo location) of the widget.

If you are a Sirius subscriber, you should get the Sirius Widget from http://www.neoscrib.com/index.php?page=project&id=70497200 or http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=38478. Clicking on the HOME/AWAY streams while in Sirius view will launch the Sirius widget and tune to that stream. The NFL widget can also launch the Sirius widget and tune to the NFL stream from the context menu, which is launched by right-clicking (Windows) or CTRL-clicking (Mac) on the widget.

When the widget loads, the NFL week displayed will be set to the current NFL week and the year displayed will be set to the current season year.

Since I couldn't locate a single web site that displayed both the DIRECTV and network TV stations for the League Games, that information is now displayed separately, via "League Games- DIRECTV [One Day]" and "League Games- Network", respectively. The "League Games- DIRECTV [One Day]" option lists all games and the DIRECTV station broadcasting the game. The "League Games- Network" option only lists games being broadcast on network TV.

To switch between the conference standings and the schedule view, use the context menu. Right-click (Windows) or CTRL-click (Mac) on the widget to bring up the context menu. To view the conference standings while you are in schedule view, select "View NFC standings" or "View AFC standings". To return to schedule view, select "View schedule/results" from the context menu; this menu item will only appear if you are viewing the conference standings. You may switch between conferences by selecting the appropriate context menu item; "Show NFC" will appear when you are viewing the AFC standings, and "Show AFC" will appear when you are viewing the NFC standings. When you are in conference view, "View standings by division" will be a context menu item if you are viewing conference standings by conference (the default), and "View standings by conference" will be a context menu item if you are viewing conference standings by division.

Use the next and previous buttons to cycle through the NFL weeks when display schedule information for "League Games- Network". You may enter also a specific week via the Preferences window. If you are viewing a "Team Schedule", you have the ability to display N games at a time, which is set via the Preferences. If you select anything other than "All", then the Next and Previous buttons will cycle through the games for the selected season year. If "All" is selected, then all games are displayed at once and the next and previous buttons cycle through the years.

Starting with version 2.0, each NFL team has their own "style", similar to how the NHL widget behaves, and you no longer select a background row color.

Schedule will update as times and scores become available. By default, data is refreshed when the widget is loaded, when you select "Refresh" from the context menu, and when you save your Preferences. You may also, via the Preferences, set the data to refresh when the schedule is maximized.

Team schedule, Network TV, and Standings data is scraped from ESPN. DirecTV data is scraped from DirecTV.com, and Sirius data is scraped from http://www.sirius.com.

Columns displayed and background opacity are configurable.

Logo position and size are configurable. The logo can be placed at any of the corners, allowing you to align the widget against any edge of the screen. The logo is also resizable.

Double-click the logo to minimize or expand the schedule. You may also click on the minus and plus images to minimize or expand the schedule.

Hovering over the logo will display the "Last Updated" time in a tooltip.

Time zone is configurable. Options include: Eastern Time (default), Central Time (Eastern Time - 1 hr), Mountain Time (Eastern Time - 2 hrs), Pacific Time (Eastern Time - 3 hrs), Alaska Time (Eastern Time - 4 hrs), and Hawaii-Aleutian Time (Eastern Time - 5 hrs). The time zone feature is geared towards U.S. time zones. Since I doubt people outside the US will run a widget that shows U.S. TV stations for an American sport, I have no plans to expand this functionality.

Next and previous buttons allow you to cycle through the information. If viewing "League Games- Network", these buttons will cycle through the NFL weeks. If viewing games for a specific team, these buttons will cycle through the years (2000- present) available on ESPN. These buttons appear in the lower left corner of the widget if the logo isn't in the lower left corner. If the logo is positioned in the lower left corner, then these buttons appear in the lower right corner. These buttons are hidden until the mouse rolls over the widget, so if you're wondering where they are, move your mouse over the schedule and look in the lower left (or right, depending on your logo location) of the widget.

From the Preferences window, you can tell the widget to check for a newer version on startup. You can also check for updates by selecting "Check for newer version" from the context menu.

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• September 2007: Prior to version 4.0 of Yahoo! Widgets, making multiple copies of the widget would allow you to display different information at the same time. For example, you could make two copies of the widget and set one to display the 2005 schedule, and one to display the 2006 schedule. You could also make multiple copies of the widget, and set each copy to display information from a different team. Or you could set one widget to display League Games, and the other copy to display the schedule for a specific team. While this can still be done on a Mac, you can no longer do this on Windows because of a bug in Yahoo! Widgets. If you need to be able to do this on Windows, contact me and I will see what I can do.
• August 2007: When I added the ability to set text colors and shadows based on teams, I changed how this information is stored. Unfortunately, you will need to respecify the text colors and shadows since there was no easy way to migrate them and keep the code clean.
• August 2007: Clicking on the HOME/AWAY streams while in Sirius view will launch the Sirius widget and tune to that stream. The NFL widget can also launch the Sirius widget and tune to the NFL stream from the context menu, which is launched by right-clicking on the widget (Windows) or CTRL-clicking (Mac).These features only work if you are a Sirius subscriber and have the Sirius widget installed and configured correctly. So if you are a Sirius subscriber, you should get the Sirius Widget from here or here.
• Since it scrapes data from a live web page, this widget will break if that web page changes its format. I'm, uh, not really a sports fan. With the exception of my Georgia Tech and Redskins widgets, I don't run any of my sports widgets. If something is broken, please contact me and I will attempt to fix it.
• September 2006: Because of a change in the layout on NFL.com, I was forced to modify how the information for DirecTV and Sirius is displayed in my widget. It is no longer possible (well, I suppose it is, but I am not willing to put in the amount of work to support that functionality) to show both Sirius and DirecTV in one view or to display the DirecTV information by NFL week. Therefore, I have separated Sirius and DirecTV, and both views show information for one day. Also, these views do NOT show the outcome for completed games.

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• To the fine people behind www.ajaxload.info, which I used to generate the new (well, new in August 2007) "loading" graphic that is optionally displayed when data is being retrieved
• To Adam Quirk (http://videoblogging.info/) for beta-testing and helping me locate the logos
• To rmewpm (aka Rob and Beth) for beta-testing.
• To Chris Creamer and his totally fabulous sportslogos.net site. And thanks to everyone who uploaded a logo to his site.

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