Fractal:Edge iTunes Top 100s
Online Help

Contents

1. Introduction

2. iTunes Top 100s Background

3. Fractal Map Settings
    3.1 Structure
    3.1.1 Genre
    3.1.2 Ranking
    3.2 Colouring
    3.3 Sorting
    3.4 Selecting a Music Store

4. Mouse Click Behavior

5. Tooltips

6. Context Menu

7. Further Information


1. Introduction

This document is intended to provide help for the "iTunes Top 100s" Fractal Map, one of Fractal Edge's live online examples. This document assumes that you are familiar with Fractal Maps and are able to view the "iTunes Top 100s" Fractal Map in your browser. For help on viewing Fractal Maps through a Web Browser, using Fractal Maps and for further background information, please refer to the Online Fractal Map User Guide.

2. iTunes Top 100 Background

The "iTunes Top 100s" Fractal Map is generated from data obtained from the iTunes RSS Feeds. This information is automatically gathered for all available countries on a daily basis and converted into a Fractal Map by Fractal:Server, Fractal Edge's centralized data processing product. The RSS feed contains information about the most popular songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store including song's title, artist, genre, release date, rights and links to the music store.

3. Fractal Map Settings

3.1 Structure  

The Fractal Map of the "iTunes Top 100s" is initially grouped by "Genre". There are two predefined structures available from the "Group by" drop down box positioned in the bottom right hand corner of the "iTunes Top 100s" page: "Genre" and "Rank":

Structure controls available from the "Group by" drop down box in the
bottom right hand corner

Using the two predefined groups it is possible to look at the Top 100 songs in different ways. If the primary interest is the category of music (Genre), the "Genre" grouping will allow selection of all songs belonging to a given category. However, if the primary interest is rankings, then the "Rank" grouping will similarly allow selection of songs based on their popularity in the various international iTunes stores. 

 

Fractal Map of the iTunes Top 100 grouped by "Genre"
 

Fractal Map of the iTunes Top 100 grouped by "Rank"

3.1.1 Genre

The "Genre" grouping is broken down by "Genre" then "Artist" and finally "Song":

Pointing the mouse at the "Pop" circle shows all
artists in the selected Top 100 classified as Pop
Pointing the mouse at an artist's circle shows all
of the artist's songs currently in the Top 100

3.1.2 Rank

The "Rank" grouping is broken down into groups of 10 songs (e.g. "Rank (1 - 10)", "Rank (11 - 20)" ...):

Pointing the mouse at the "Rank (1 - 10)" circle shows
the songs in the Top 10

 

3.2 Colouring

The Fractal Map is initially coloured by Rank.

The colour scheme can be disabled by selecting "None" from the "Colour by" dropdown box in the bottom right hand corner of the window:

 

Colour controls available from the "Colour by" drop down box in the
bottom right hand corner

Beneath the drop down controls at the bottom of the window is the colour legend. By comparing the colours of the circles in the Fractal Map, the colour legend indicates how popular a song is. Comparing the colour of circles at higher levels in the Fractal Map (e.g. at a Genre or Ranking Group level) will indicate the average ranking of that group.

 

The Colouring Legend - for this scheme, the least popular songs are coloured red and the most popular songs are coloured purple

 

3.3 Sorting

The Fractal Map is initially sorted by "Rank" - the songs (or the groups at higher levels) are ordered clockwise from most to least popular. There are two predefined sorting schemes - "Rank" and "Name". The current sorting scheme can be changed by selecting from the "Sort by" dropdown box in the bottom right hand corner:

 

Sorting controls available from the "Sort by" drop down box in the
bottom right hand corner

 

3.4 Selecting a Music Store

The Fractal Map is initially loaded with the Top 100 iTunes songs from the US store. If you live in, or are interested in music from another country, select the country of interest from the "iTunes Store" dropdown in the top right hand corner of the window:

iTunes stores for available countries are selectable from the "iTunes Store" dropdown in the top right corner

When a different iTunes store is selected, the page must reload to gather the information applicable to the selected country.

Currently the full list of countries include:

  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Canada
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Luxembourg
  • Netherlands
  • Portugal
  • Spain
  • UK
  • USA


4. Mouse Click Behavior

Single clicking on a circle, label or parent bar region in the Fractal Map will zoom to that area. If the target is a circle or its label it will enlarge the selected circle to display it in more detail. If the target is one of the  bars outside the Fractal Map it will zoom back to the selected level.

When using the ActiveX/Mozilla Plug-in, double-clicking on a circle that represents a song will zoom into that circle and additionally open the song in the iTunes Music Store from iTunes. If you do not have iTunes installed, you will be redirected to the iTunes download site.

When using the DHTML client, songs can also be opened directly from the Fractal Map by right clicking the map and selecting the appropriate option from the Context Menu.

5. Tooltips

If using the ActiveX/Mozilla Plug-in or the DHTML Client and the mouse pointer is positioned over a circle or label representing to a song, a tooltip with the full song details including a picture of the album cover appears:

 

A tooltip displaying information about the highlighted song 

The tooltips displayed by the Macromedia Flash Player simply contain the text details of the selected item.

6. Context Menu

If you are using the ActiveX/Mozilla Plug-in, the context menu is accessed by right clicking anywhere on the Fractal Map, its labels or associated bars. In addition to the standard controls found on the context menu, there are submenus to select the Colour, Sort and Group options as descripted above as well as two available callout options to the iTunes Music Store:

Available callouts to the iTunes Music Store

Similar to double-clicking on a song in the Fractal Map to view the song info in the iTunes Music Store, callouts can be accessed to view the Artist and Genre info. This can be performed by right clicking on an Artist or Genre circle in the Fractal Map and selecting "View artist info in iTunes" or "View genre info in iTunes" from the "Callouts" submenu.

Although the Macromedia Flash Player only supports the 'About Fractal Edge...' option, callouts are available on the DHTML Client Context Menu.

7. Further Information

For further information, please refer to the following links:

Online Fractal Map User Guide
Online Fractal Map Examples
Terms of Use for Online Fractal Maps
Fractal:Edge Case Studies
Fractal:Edge Products
About Fractal:Edge