App Store categories get browser pages

Apple has apparently taken another step towards bringing iTunes to the browser, as you can now browse actual categories of the iTunes store right in regular HTML rather than having to click over into iTunes. There's still no support for television or movies, but you can dive in from categories to artists and then even explore and preview songs, right in your browser of choice. Assuming, of course, that your browser of choice is Firefox or Safari -- while Chrome or IE will probably work, we haven't tested them extensively yet.

All we need now is for iTunes to cut it out with the automatic jump into iTunes -- even though your browser will load up a real page in the background, the browser store still tries to throw an external link request out to iTunes. Our own Brett Terpstra found that when you copy or type a browser link directly into your browser, the store won't try to open, but if you click in from an external link (like those here on TUAW), iTunes will try to open. Apple may not want us just browsing iTunes outside of the official app, but it would be nice for those of us who are pointing out iTunes content to folks who may not actually have iTunes installed to have a link to share.

For more fun tricks you can do with do with browser-based app store links, look here.