[jQuery] looping through form elements.

Hello all, I'm relatively new to JavaScript.  I would like to loop
through all the elements within a form and grab their values and what
type of input they are.  So far I came up with:

$(':input').each(function(idx, item) {
     alert(idx);
});

The alert is placed there to see if it loops and it works as
expected.  I'm not sure how to alert the input's value and what type
it is.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Thanks,
     Rich