On iTunes site launch

I just launched a new personal project site http://onitunes.us. I've had the blog (http://blog.onitunes.us) for awhile. Durring my staycation I decided to kick it up a notch. Check it out and make fun of me...Oh, and if you click on any of the iTunes links I'll get a little something from it. So click click click!

To build this site I used:

• jQuery
• jQuery UI
• jQuery Lazy Load Plugin
• jQuery Media Plugin
• jQuery Browser Plugin Detection
• jQuery iPod-style Drilldown Menu
• iTunes Store Web Service Search API

The bulk of the site is parsing XML using PHP's SimpleXML extension. I also added a caching function inspired by RSS parser with cache function. All of the previews are Quicktime. I wanted to add a custom Flash video player, but I could not get it to work with the m4v's that Apple was sending me. I'm not sure why they DRM protect their previews???

I was thinking about adding some widgets that people can put on their websites, blogs, or social sites. I also thought about finally getting around to version 2 of the iTunes Artwork script that I had promised. I don't know??? Should I do it?

I discovered that the Apple iTunes Store partnered with LinkShare to offer an affiliate program. It's pretty cool. I've get a enough money each month to buy lunch. Everybody needs a little extra cash! It's easy. Click the banner below and set up and account today. Copy/paste a line of code and start making money right away!

iTunes Artwork - Version 1

I've been playing around with the Apple iTunes Store data feeds lately. Mainly I'm wanting to perfect how I post stuff to my blog about iTunes. But also because it's fun. I had the idea to show a bunch of album covers based on a specific search term. I quickly made this little script that pull 100 album covers from the Apple iTunes Store based on the work 'Love'. You can click on any of the album covers to download that album from iTunes.

VIEW DEMO

Basically, I'm parsing a JSON feed from iTunes with jQuery and looping through the results. Pretty simple. I'm working on another version that allows the user to enter the search term and decide how many results are returned. But, more about that latter...

iPhone Style Checkboxes jQuery

Ever wanted those flash iPhone on/off toggle switches on your webpage? Love jQuery? Well then I’ve got something special for you. iphone-style-checkboxes implements the iPhone toggles as replacements for standard HTML checkboxes. Simply run the script and your site will be updated with these specialized controls. Best of all, the underlying checkbox is not touched and backend system will never know the difference. The change is purely visual.

The iPhone Style Checkboxes jQuery script by Thomas Reynolds is pretty cool. I've used it on a couple of projects and I love how it works. I did have one small problem with form submissions. I sent a message to Thomas and he quickly responded. He wasn't able to help, but it's still cool that he had a dialogue with little ol' me. It turns out that when submitting a form, you'll need to make sure to make the value of the checkbox one.

input checked="" name="checkbox" type="checkbox" value="1"

Thomas also crafted a Prototype version.

Check it out... http://bit.ly/9hssHQ

CodeIgnitor

CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. If you're a developer who lives in the real world of shared hosting accounts and clients with deadlines, and if you're tired of ponderously large and thoroughly undocumented frameworks.

There's been a big uprise of frameworks for PHP in the past several years. I've never really been able to fully commit to any of them. Many time I felt that they were just too much to deal with. About a year ago I went to a PHP meetup and Rasmus Lerdorf was there speaking about web security. Someone asked him which framework he liked. I really liked his answer. He said that he didn't like any of them. But, he did say that CodeIgniter is the one that he dislikes the least. Coming from the guy that is responsible for all development for Yahoo and the guy that freaking started PHP, I would say that is a pretty good compliment for CodeIgniter. So, I checked it out again. I forced myself to dig in and use it for a couple of projects. The more I used it the more I like it. It has its short comings, but it's the one that I dislike the least.

jQuery Tools: The missing UI library for the Web

jQuery Tools is a collection of the most important user-interface components for today's websites. This single JavaScript file weighs only 5.72 Kb

I've been using the jQuery Tools from Flowplayer on quite a few projects. I really like it. They have tabs, tooltip, overlay, expose, scrollable, and flashembed. They put the js files on a CDN from Net DNA. Some of the demos don't always work and even the site itself seams to be down quite a bit. But, all in all it's great stuff. The forum is pretty good for help, it's really active. Flowplayer is pretty cool too!

TextMate : The Missing Editor for Mac OS X

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

When I first started building websites I used Adobe Dreamweaver on a PC. There are lots of things that I love and hate about Dreamweaver. There are really on things that I hate about PC's. Several years ago I jumped on the Mac bandwagon. No regrets. I stuck with Dreamweaver and it suited me just fine for a while. About a year ago I started looking at other text editors like Eclipse, Aptana Studio, Coda, and TextMate. I really didn't like either one. I'm sure they are both great and I know they have lots of cool features built in. But, TextMate had me at the get set because it was so simple and so Mac like. I've used it for about a year and I love it. 

jParse: jQuery XML Parse Plugin

jParse is a jQuery plugin that allows you to parse XML that was fetched with the jQuery .ajax method (making it fully customizable). It's compatible with jQuery 1.4+, easy to use and ultra lightweight at only 2.18KB! Best of all, it's compatible with all major browsers.

I really enjoy using jParse. It's easy to implement and there are several features right out of the box that are pretty cool. As of this writting it is still in beta. I can't wait to see how this plugin develops. It's perfect for parsing normal RSS feeds. I wish that there was additional functionality that would allow reading children of element tags to allow for parsing of more complex XML.