MSP contest entry - It's Showtime

[sTyLeS]

Well, I really procrastinated on this one. I just submitted my entry to be hosted for me, so hopefully that constitutes submitting by the deadline. So unfortunately since I'm not hosting it myself I don't have anything for you guys to play with yet.

My app is called "It's Showtime", and is intended to display all movie theaters near the user's location, list all movies for each of those theaters, and the showtimes.

The first screen contains a simple form where the user can enter their location. In the U.S. this can be zipcode, or city and state. In other countries the city and country will suffice.


Then in the resulting screen you can see that up to 10 of the nearest theaters are displayed, and by rolling over each button that theater's contact info (address and phone) is displayed at the bottom.


Finally, when clicking on the theater button, a popup is displayed showing all of the movies currently playing at that theater, and rolling over each movie updates the showtimes at the bottom of the popup. Clicking the "Home" button closes the popup.


In this final screenshot you can see that it also works internationally.


Man, after doing this, I can tell you that I have a new found appreciation for the skin developers for the various movie jukeboxes. There definitely are some limitations of the browser, but those guys have really been able to push it to its limits with some really ingenious workarounds.

[genius995]

Nice Can't wait to try this one out.

[sTyLeS]

Thanks.
Unfortunately I was only able to fully test the SD skin of mine since that's all I have for the PCH. I created the HD skin and tried to just extrapolate and go by how it looked on the computer monitor, but we all know Firefox displays completely differently than the PCH.

[sTyLeS]

Got my mspsite hosted URL back for my plugin.
Here it is:
http://plugin.mspsite.com/user/Its_Showtime

And obviously it's intended for the NMT, but depending on what browser you're using on your computer it may work there as well. I've seen it work properly on Firefox 3.5.3

[andyberry]

This looks very cool!
I have a request: since my location doesn't change and entering my postal code (or any text) with the remote is a PIA, is there a way to pass the location directly in the URL? e.g., "http://plugin.mspsite.com/user/Its_Showtime?b2t1e7"
Thanks,
-A

(10-22-2009 03:38 PM)sTyLeS Wrote:  Got my mspsite hosted URL back for my plugin.
Here it is:
http://plugin.mspsite.com/user/Its_Showtime

And obviously it's intended for the NMT, but depending on what browser you're using on your computer it may work there as well. I've seen it work properly on Firefox 3.5.3

[sTyLeS]

(10-23-2009 11:01 AM)andyberry Wrote:  This looks very cool!
I have a request: since my location doesn't change and entering my postal code (or any text) with the remote is a PIA, is there a way to pass the location directly in the URL? e.g., "http://plugin.mspsite.com/user/Its_Showtime?b2t1e7"
Thanks,
-A

I tried it out, but since the url http://plugin.mspsite.com/user/Its_Showtime actually does a redirect and uses the MSP service to detect resolution and all, it appears as though any params passed in initially get lost.
Sorry about that. If I had hosted it myself we would have been able to do something like that, but unfortunately I'm not in a place to do that right now.