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StarRater Implementation

Installing StarRater is just a matter of inserting some HTML to reference the applet. To put an applet in a HTML page, you use the applet tag. Here is a typical applet:

Dune (1984)

This is the HTML code for the applet:

<applet codebase="http://movies.at.gustos.com/classes" code=gustos.guide.applets.Gustos width=290 height=35 archive=Gustos.zip>
<param name=site value="http://www.gustos.com/">
<param name=title value="Dune (1984)">
<param name=categories value="Sci Fi|Fantasy|Movies">
<param name=url value="/cgi-bin/movie_page.cgi?item_name=Dune%20%281984%29">
<param name=uniq value="http://us.imdb.com/M/title-exact?Dune%20%281984%29">
<param name=change value=18>
<param name=color value=255,255,255>
</applet>

This example was taken from the Gustos demo. You can view the source of these pages to see more examples. Below are explanations of the lines in the example above:

<applet codebase="http://movies.at.gustos.com/classes" code=gustos.guide.applets.Gustos width=290 height=35 archive=Gustos.zip>
The only part of this that you should change is the codebase. We recommend that you choose the Gustos server most appropriate for your site. Our current list of servers are:

• movies.at.gustos.com
• music.at.gustos.com
• books.at.gustos.com
• travel.at.gustos.com
• misc.at.gustos.com

site
<param name=site value="http://www.gustos.com/">
This should be the URL of your home page.

title
<param name=title value="Dune (1984)">
This is the title of the thing that the applet is associated with. The title is used in the Gustos pages (recommendations, my ratings, popular list).

url
<param name=url value="/cgi-bin/movie_page.cgi?item_name=Dune%20%281984%29">
This is the URL at your site where information about this item can be found. This is used to make links from Gustos pages (recommendations, my ratings, popular list). In the above example, the URL is to a CGI.

categories
<param name=categories value="Sci Fi|Fantasy|Movies">
This is a list of the categories that this item belongs to. You make up these catagories. When the user asks to see a list (from the menu in the applet), he will get a list of items from the first category in the list. The other categories will be listed as alternatives at the top of the page. If you have a small site, you can just have one category.

uniq
<param name=uniq value="http://us.imdb.com/M/title-exact?Dune%20%281984%29">
This is a string that uniquely identifies an item. In the example above, we used the Internet Movie Database URL of a movie to uniquely identify it. We would like all sites to use the same uniq identifier for the same things so that the user's ratings are cross-site. We will be working with sites in different areas (movies, music, books, etc.) to define unique identifiers for items in each area.

change
<param name=change value=18>
Gustos maintains its database using the information you provide for the applet parameters. When you change a parameter, you should increment the change parameter each time you change one of the other parameters (except for color). This lets Gustos know to update its database. In the above example, the parameters were changed 18 times.

color
<param name=color value=255,255,255>
This is the RGB color value of the applet. In the above example, the color is white. This parameter is optional. We hope that Java will support transparent applets making this parameter unnecessary.

For more information, visit our FAQ page.