Nice new iTunes U front-end features

The iTunes U team emailed some updated documentation this week, a lot of it having to do with authentication scripts. More important to us at UC Berkeley with an entirely public site are some front-end goodies:

• You can now search for tracks within your site. The metadata fields currently indexed for searching are: Name, Album, Artist, and Comments. If you are using iTunes 6.0.4 or earlier, a search field will display within iTunes U pages. iTunes 6.0.5 uses the search field built-in to iTunes (upper right corner of the window).

Here is a screenshot of this in action. Note the search term “world” in the upper-right iTunes player search box:

Responding to some criticism about being “locked in” they have made the following changes:

• When you control-click or right-click on a tab, a contextual menu appears that allows you to copy the URL for the tab.
• Podcast enclosure types have been updated to better support third-party podcatchers and aggregators.

Here’s a shot of the URL grabbing:

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