Almost done!!!!

After many months of hard work, things are rapidly shaping up for the next release of Crossfire.
This release will pretty much finalize the engine itself, and implements tons and tons of cewl new features.

[*] A brand new FireFox/Safari/Chrome theme called: Crossfire MediaPlayer.
[*] Last.FM integration: Spot similar bands, and other album of currently playing songs.
[*] Export playlists directly to XSPF or ASX (so now you can fire-up your favorite player and stream from your playlists).
[*] iTunes like search function (one textbox to rule them all!!)
[*] Nice audio-visuals (thanks to the great JWPlayer!)
[*] crossfire templates can now hold and read global variables, that may be used for passing variables between pages.
[*] improved playlist generator, now using the crossfire_playlist.php, which will generate the playlist server-side, and has plenty of cewl options (including XSPF, ASX, QTL) support.
[*] iPhone now plays the song directly instead of showing the 'Headphones' QuickTime element!!
[*] AJAX cache; This will make you load an page only once per session.
[*] Server-Side caching (decreasing load times even more!!)
[*] FireFox/IE AJAX loading screen between requests.
fixed:
[*] Crossfire is unable to work with DAAP Authentication (resolved)
[*] iPhone 'blank_page' issue (fixed!!).

preview screens:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0vAfiapxxgfhBL6KQnc1BLnSIaQoxp6CEhx6FEJWbbngPboDzZkVknfIKpubYiHyHr6-bZc61cnhDws2XTBFCnomICKK_-2qcHnLnD4kEK6EskG-oKfB9Tfyqe9-8qzulewuFZaidwICF/s1600-h/preview_crossfire1.gif

The definitive AJAX request script

Since i hate setting global Javascript XMLHttpRequest variables when dealing with AJAX, i decided to roll my own lightweight AJAX class.
The main problem with async callbacks is that the callback loses its reference object, and therefore gets descoped of the original class.
To solve this issue, i wrapped up a better way of dealing the callback supporting both the XMLHttp object itself, and a referal object..

PS: i didnt add the POST method yet, but this should be damn straightforward.

function ajax() {
this.method = 'GET';
}

ajax.prototype = {
// request calls a webservice
// onreadychange, calls the callback function through a inline function
// so the XmlHttpRequest object is transferred (and not lost) since we are not using lame global
// XMLHttpRequest variables.
// Optionally you add an referenceobject to be included.
// Since the callback is normally out of bounds of any object, you can use the reference object within your
// callback function.
request : function(url, callback, referenceobj) {
var xml_obj = false;
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // Mozilla, Safari,...
xml_obj = new XMLHttpRequest();
if (xml_obj.overrideMimeType) {
xml_obj.overrideMimeType('text/xml');
}
} else if (window.ActiveXObject) { // IE

try {
xml_obj = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
} catch (e) {
try {
xml_obj = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
} catch (e) {
alert('Cannot create XMLHTTP instance');
}
}
}

if (!xml_obj) {
alert('Cannot create XMLHTTP instance');
return false;
}
prompt('',url);
xml_obj.open('GET',url,true);
xml_obj.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (referenceobj!=null) {
callback(xml_obj, referenceobj);
} else {
callback(xml_obj);
}
};
xml_obj.send(null);

}
}


usage from within any function:
var ajx = new ajax();
ajx.request( url, function(obj,refobject) {
if ((obj.readyState == 4)&&(obj.status == 200)) {
if (refobject.enableJSON==true) {
json_obj = eval( "(" + obj.responseText + ")" );
callback(json_obj);
} else {
callback(obj.responseXML);
}
}
}
, this);


/**/
notice this, is the reference for the callback, so the autononymouse function can handle itself. ;)