23 Comments

OS X: Fandango Movie Theaters widget

dashboard-widget.jpg

Fancy adding a surprisingly useful Dashboard widget to your arsenal? The following looks somewhat familiar (demo’d on Leopard). A little birdie tipped us to let us know the download for the widget can be found here. Input your local zip code and receive instant theater info for movies playing in your area.


  • Justin

    An uneasysilence original :)

  • http://area-77.com/blog snookie

    Wow this is great! Thanks loads :)

  • Lukas

    um, i assume this works only on leopard? Not working here on 10.4.10…

  • http://www.jesusnerd.com Joey

    Working great on Intel Macbook, OS X 10.4.10

  • Chiefton

    It used to work great for me, now it just says “invalid zip code” no matter what I put in it. I have uninstalled and reinstalled it also. It was working on 10.4.10, but not anymore. I also have it on another Mac and it has the same issue. Maybe something with the Fandango Site has changed that is it polling.

  • Joe

    No, really. Why did this widget stop working? I have four macs with it installed, 2 G4s and 2 Intel Macs. Same thing as the other poster noted “Invalid Zip Code”.

    Just tell us it is meant for Leopard if that is the case.

    Thanks,
    Joe

  • Diana

    Hi,
    The same pass to me, I had install it in two macs and now says: “invalid zip code”
    It is sad :(

  • Dean

    Has anyone found a fix for this widget? Or know who developed it etc? This was my most useful widget and it doesn’t work anymore!! I get invalid zip code!

  • http://www.kmdezine.com Kris VanderVies

    Whats the deal with this widget? Worked great for a while and now the same zip code error that everyone else is having… Is this because apple owns it now? just let us know…

  • http://www.kmdezine.com Kris

    Hey whats the deal with this great widget. It worked for a while and then the same zip code error that everyone else is talking about. Did apple buy all rights to it? Let everyone know whats going on. I have tried to install several times also and the same error persists.

  • Dean

    WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS WIDGET??????

  • Dean

    WHAT’S UP WITH THIS WIDGET??????

  • Dean

    If anyone finds a fix for this or a good alternative, please email me!!!!! jagon331@hotmail.com

  • Dean

    ***THIS JUST IN*** This widget comes/works with Leopard!!!

  • http://weblogwithnoname.blogspot.com Chris Tucker

    I emailed Fandango about this, and was told, “Well, it works for ME.”

    Screw ‘em!

  • Leigh

    Does this widget only work on Leopard? I can’t even find it on the dashboard page on apple.com … anyone know what’s up

  • mpmchugh

    Check and see if you have a Movies widget in your user ~/Library/Widgets folder. If so delete is, and Dashboard will use the newly installed on at /Library/Widgets., which will work.

    -mpm

  • Benjamin

    Here is how to fix it:
    I had this widget before I switched to leopard.
    So, just delete the widget and a new one will appear.
    This one works.
    Take care.
    Benjamin

  • Avo

    Which means Apple deliberately broke it for Tiger …

  • pat ferris

    I have the same problem as the others have written. I have a new imac and the latest leopard. it worked yesterday and then when I switched the cupertino address that it came with – ‘invalid’. when i connect with the ‘i’ it is going to a website without www and it says error. can you help?
    thanks

  • Justin Thomas

    I think I may be on to something as for why this is not working for non leopard users. Gonna need some help from someone with a working copy on leopard. If you open the widget to view internal files there is a javascript source file called parser.js, this contains the javascript to poll Fandango for the movie data. It is using the following URL to poll the data

    “http://www.fandango.com/frdi?pid=A99D3D1A-774C-4914-9E3B-18645117428A&op=performancesbypostalcodesearch&verbosity=1&postalcode=”

    If you put this into your web browser the fandango site returns the following error code:

    The partner id ‘A99D3D1A-774C-4914-9E3B-18645117428A’ is not valid or is not recognized.

    You can see that the pid from the url is being rejected by their code, my conclusion is that the newer widget in leopard is using a working partner id code and the fix may be as easy as modifying the id code in the older versions with the working one from the newer version in leopard.

    If someone with a working copy would like to help please post here the pid from the parser.js file within the widget. To access the contents of the widget, locate the widget file in library/widgets then right click and select show package contents. The parser.js file will be in there and can be viewed with textmate or any other text editor.

    Thanks,
    Justin

  • Randy Kaempen

    This widget seems to work for me in Leopard, but it shows a runtime of over 2 hours for most movies. Movies which are listed on Fandango’s website as 1:24 show as 2:24 in the widget. They have a bad calculation somewhere.

  • Justin Thomas

    I did some digging into the widget on a buddies working leopard machine and discovered the widget in leopard is different than the one everyone has been using in tiger. There is now a new script called moviesparser.js in the following location

    /System/Library/WidgetResources/.parsers/

    And Apple is no longer grabbing data from Fandango directly they are polling from themselves. I was able to make the leopard widget work on tiger in safari just testing by copying those two files. It will not work yet in the dashboard.

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