Amazon Rank 0.3: New Features
I have added a couple of features to my AmazonRank widget. You can now click on any of the items in the list and the widget will fade in the item detail for the selected item. The detail shows you the full name of the title, author, actual Amazon SalesRank, and the price.
Additionally, you can jump to the product page on Amazon.com from the item detail.
I have also updated the download on RIAForge. Click the link below to check it out.
5 Comments
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Hello, Kyle
I found your interesting Amazon rank tool while searching for something that can return the sales rank for a list of multiple ISBN’s.
I’ve put the files on my server, changed the subscription ID in config.xml, and put substituted some of my own ISBN’s into the list,
e.g. <asin>0745628362</asin>
I have two questions, the first is: there seems to be something particular about the <items> list such that it’s very picky either about
the syntax of the list itself or about the content of the ISBN’s. Some modifications of the <items> list work ok and return my books in the
.swf object (although usually it shows only two books in the list). Other changes result in nothing at all displayed in the window.
I can’t figure out what the pattern is in terms of what is allowed/disallowed in the list.
And the second question: Is it possible to change the height of the .swf object such that I can display an unlimited (or much less limited)
list of books in the window? And if so how would I go about doing that ?
Thanks !
Andrew
Well, Andrew, I am actually quite aware of the issues that you speak of. This widget is particularly touchy right now (unfortunately). I believe what it is that causes some of the items to not display at all has to do with a product not having the full amount of information from Amazon. So for instance, if there is no image for the product, then it won’t even show up on the list, becuase for the sake of getting the first version out, I had to put in a try/catch that would not throw an error.
Now, the fact that you would like to see the actual sales rank, you may be more interested in the source code for version 0.1 of AmazonRank (http://www.kylehayes.info/blog/index.cfm/2007/1/4/Amazon-Rank-Widget). This particular version is actually going to be branched off to a new tool AmazonRank PRO, eventually.
When you load this page, you will notice that an error will popup, just click "Continue" and you should be fine.
Let me know if you want the source for this one. Also, this product is still quite early in development and I am actually still quite new to Flex.
Thanks, Andrew, for contacting!
seems that this widget is not working with Mac OS X. Is that possible?
Actually Marc, I designed this widget in OS X
What you might try and do is make sure that you have the latest version of the Flash Player installed in Safari/Firefox.
You can download it either from Versiontracker:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/11622
or from Adobe:
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/#fp
I have had reports of this being the case on one other person’s machine, they were seeing only a white box instead of the widget.
Nice amazon widget. It looks greatly!
http://yardz.info