DvdFriend Updates - Library

I've been working on other projects for a couple months now. I put both on hold last night so that I could work on DvdFriend for a bit.

Chris T has offered a lot of feedback on what the site should be able to do. Fortunately, most of the stuff he has come up with is stuff that the old site could do. Once it gets rebuilt in the new site, it should be better than the orignal.

LIBRARY / RATINGS
When you click a product, you go to the product page where it shows you all of the ratings, reviews, prices, and summary information. There's a new section that allows you to:
- Change your rating (if you already have one)
- Add a rating (if you don't have one)
- Edit or Write a review (depending if you have one)

The ADD A RATING isn't perfect. It brings you to the EDIT REVIEW page rather than offering the drop down list. This is because that in order to create a rating, you have to specify the rating type such as MOVIE, BOOK or XBOX 360. Products in DvdFriend don't have product types. They're ambiguous. That's good because it allows me to bind anything to anything. Its bad for situations like this where I would like to do something specific.

There's an EDIT PRODUCT page in the admin side of the site. I'm going to work on that (eventually) and add some default information.

You'll also see there's a LIBRARY section. Here, you can select what formats of the product you own. DVD, HD-DVD, BLU-RAY, BOOK, XBOX 360, etc. This list is too long, but will work for now. Once the concept of PRODUCT TYPE exists, the list will adjust contextually.

When you click a checkbox in the library section, it uses ASP.NET AJAX to save the call automatically. This isn't anything fancy; its just an update panel.

XBOX 360
By request, I added an XBOX 360 entry and an image, so now we can review and sell games. I added some prices. They went in as DVD. I'll change those to XBOX when I feel less lazy.

REVIEW SOMETHING
There used to be a REVIEW SOMETHING link and a SEARCH link in the menu bar. The search sucked because when you found a product, you wouldn't have a way to write a review or rating. So, then you'd have to go to the REVIEW SOMETHING page and search again. Lame. Really, that was just due to the fact that the product page was incomplete. It was lacking a lot of functionality. That functionality is now in there, so it should be a better experience.

I got rid of the REVIEW SOMETHING link altogether. I used to need that so that I could add non-product related entries, such as news items, rants, etc, but I haven't used it much, so I don't need it. If/when I do need it, I'll add it to the admin site.

NEXT STEPS
Now that the library stuff is in there, I need to make it more available. I'm picturing a BROWSE page that will allow you to look at products different ways. Immediately, it would be nice to list all of the HD-DVDs so you can just go down the list and click those that are in your library.

Once people have items in their library, the next logical step is to share the list with friends and co-workers. In the old site, this was called DVD COMMUNITIES. I'll have to start rebuilding that.

Also, I think its about time to open up the site. I currently enable users on an individual basis because I haven't finished all of the signup stuff. I should probably make that a priority.

In the meantime, if you would like to be able to login to the site to set ratings or write reviews, let me know.