Comments

Don’t forget that you need to URL-encode the URL to your wishlist - otherwise things might break in some browsers.

PS: I almost didn’t notice the comment section, it’s not very prominent.

With the way the URL is written, you shouldn’t need to encode it first. There’s no query string, and the URL only contains forward slashes. As far as the browser’s concerned, the http… part is just part of the path on the server.

It works in all the usual suspects. Opera 7, IE6, Mozilla 1.x, and Netscape 4. But let me know if you find a browser that this doesn’t work in.

A couple of tips…

The wishlists are updated from Amazon.com every five minutes. So if you change your wishlist, it might take a few minutes for the changes to show up on your site.

If you want to change the style of the list, simply put a DIV around the wishlist code. Then apply a style to the div. For example, if you want to show the list without bullets, you could use the following code…

<style type=”text/css”> <!— .wishlist ul{ padding 0; margin 0; } .wishlist li{ list-style: none; } —> </style> <div class=”wishlist”> <script src=”http://kalsey.com/tools/amazon/wishlist/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/registry/9TPZE7QC6FP/” language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”> </script> </div>

As far as the browser’s concerned, the http… part is just part of the path on the server.

No, it includes a colon. From RFC 1738:

“Octets must be encoded if they have no corresponding graphic character within the US-ASCII coded character set, if the use of the corresponding character is unsafe, or if the corresponding character is reserved for some other interpretation within the particular URL scheme.”

The colon has a very specific interpretation within the HTTP URL scheme, it separates the hostname from the port number. What with the sheer number of UAs out there (including any syndication utilities you care to mention), I would rather just conform to the standard than guess about whether or not any given UA will interpret the non-standard code correctly.

Thank you very much for sharing this tip! I’m going to go add it to my page right now!

By the way, how would someone “URL Encode” the URL? I’m not sure what is meant by this. Could you please give an example? I’d really appreciate it.

What Jim means is change the http://www.amazon to read http%3A//www.amazon

I still contend that it’s not needed. While it is technically not correct to have a colon in the URL (unless you are using it as part of your authentication scheme), most browsers are smart enough to deal with it. You aren;t likely to have problems even if you don’t encode the URL.

Very cool. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work with amazon.co.uk …

that’s awesome… but what about those of us that have our own affiliate? as opposed to sending all the comission to you!? (I guess perhaps it’s a trade off for the code?)

You can also have a look at my AmazonBox which lets you display your wishlist and, with a small hack, allows people to purchase an item for you and send it to you.

http://www.edazzle.net/amazon/