WebOS client interest?

[eblade]

Hi everyone At the urging of a couple of people on various webOS forums out there, I've looked into and started building a webOS Subsonic client and music player. I've got it up and running and doing some basic tasks on all versions of webOS and all hardware that runs it.

Just thought I'd join in the user forum here, and see if anyone else that is already using Subsonic has any interest in such an app. Would love to hear from you.

[ebasta]

Yes! I would love it! I have held off putting Android on the Touchpad because of battery issues and, in reality, WebOS does almost everything that I need it to do (except a really good Gmail interface, native google voice, google maps, etc. ). I would love to have a nice subsonic interface for the tablet running on WebOS.

[eblade]

Just thought I'd pop in a tablet shot .. I'm no graphic guy, so my "programmer art" consists of text-labelled buttons. Hopefully my UI designer will have some things I can use.





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[mozster]

this sounds great! I'm more than happy to give feedback on any early builds you might have

[eblade]

OK, go to this link from your TouchPad or Pre/Veer/Pixi ..

https://developer.palm.com/appredirect/ ... ade.xobeta

I'm probably not going to get time to get back to this app for a few days. I wouldn't really call this a "beta" per se, but I would like to get some feedback on it.

[eblade]

ok, seriously, lots of app installs, and no commentary?

I realize that a lot of stuff doesn't work, such as the download file buttons anywhere but in the Music tab, and the Lyrics, but I thought I'd get some commentary

[bbanzai]

Just been trying this out. Really good start, but though I 'd give some feedback.

I am personally a TouchPad, and would find JukeBox mode the most useful addition. While the TouchPad speakers are as good an any mobile device I've heard I don't generally listen to music on it. If I want to use headphones I'll use my phone, if I want to play out of the stereo JukeBox is my first choice there.

Thanks for all you efforts in putting this together hope the feedback is helpful.

GUI:
No swipe bar at the bottom of playing list had to guess that i could swipe right out of full screen player to get back to menus

Tapping the album cover in the player pane takes me to the lyrics view, then i can;t get back (probably because you haven;t implemented that feture yet). FWIW I' d rather see tapping there take you to a now playing list, w/ Shuffle, repeat, and save a playlist options..

Usability:
Performance is the big one here ,its just very slow to bring up "Music" list, search results are a bit better though (my collection is large, but not huge: 761 artists 22000 songs)

"Music" tab seems to bring up a random selection of about 100 albums, why not list my top level folders here (or somewhere)...

Enhancements:
Would like option to add to currently playing, or play now in music, playlist list & search results (Download isn't really any use to me, personally, see above re: TouchPad usage)

A now playing list to add those things to



Jukebox mode!

[eblade]

Thank you so much for the feedback, some of that is definitely stuff that I want to do, and some of it is really good information as to how people who are seeing it for the first time see the interface.

ok the "Playlist" tab on the player side is more of a "Now Playing" list, and the "Playlists" tab on the left hand side is the server's playlists. I guess I can change the "Playlist" tab to "Now Playing" or some such, if that would make it more obvious. Definitely need to highlight the "currently playing" song in the list view.

I'd like to do Jukebox, for sure, but I wanted to get the player stuff together first - as well as with the Download option. I have a wireless N connection at home, so I can download entire songs in literally like 2 or 4 seconds from my network, but my mobile bandwidth is absolutely horrible, so I can't stream while I'm on the go, even at super low bitrates.

If you end up on the Lyrics tab, you can tap inside the words, and it will switch to the next tab, which is the playlist. When that area is larger, it will have a larger clickable area Or just click the tab, if you have the tabs open (hold for a second or so inside the player or playlist or lyrics view to bring up the tabs)

I would've thought that the player sliding over from the right to fullscreen, would've made it obvious, but will add a handlebar down there if i can find some space to make it more obvious.

the Music tab is populated by whatever you last selected in the Home tab. I think that the current package has a limit of 200 on whatever it pulls. It does make it a little slow, and I will add pagination, so it doesn't have to load 200 at a time, it can load like 20 at a time. I do intend to add a "By Artist" selection to the "Home" tab, however, the artist list API apparently will only dump the -entire- thing, so i get some 2000 entries into that list when i pull that. I'll need to figure something out to do about that, because 2000 entry lists are just plain bad. Search is probably a better function to use.

I do intend to add a "Save Playlist" option that will save the playlist to the server. I think tapping on any song anywhere will automatically do "Play Now". I need to get dragging working from the search results.

Actually, let me just copy the TODO list that I have in the app right now..

Code: Select all

// TODO: stop the Interval that is set in the MusicPlayer when application is not foreground, resume when it is.  Also stop it when that pane is switched to a different view.
// TODO: half implemented scrolling when dragging music to top or bottom of list ?
// TODO: half implemented downloading of files
// TODO: Jukebox mode .. with volume buttons on device directly controlling the jukebox volume
// TODO: stop play at App Exit . . unless going to dashboard mode?
// TODO: since playlist remembers where it left off at when restarting, need to be able to restart there.. only clear playlist index when necessary (ie, when adding a file above this one, or clearing the list, or loading a new one)
// TODO: if a file in the list is playing or downloading, have it have it work as a ProgressButton ?
// TODO: drag-drop to player (add to playlist, or play now?)
// TODO: investigate searches returning exactly one result not showing up (ie "Judas Priest" shows 0 artists?)
// TODO: add (optional?) banner notification of new song info when player switches songs, if app is in background, or player view is not visible
// TODO: when highlighting song in playlist that is active in player, attempt to scroll it into view?
// TODO: download button on Search view doesn't work
// TODO: if you start typing it should just pop over to the search tab, and focus the search input (see fahhem's blog)
// TODO: selecting a playlist opens it drawer-fashion like under it, instead of opening it in the Music tab?
// TODO: dragging from search list (bugged currently)
// TODO: (option to?) disable sleep while player screen is up
// TODO: Exhibition mode
// TODO: had to add a timeout in the Transition code to deal with transitioning failure when auto-flipping from Search to Music tab.. investigate why the transition fails.
// TODO: "gapless" playback?

// INVESTIGATE: time on B.Y.O.B. on Mezmerize by SOAD is showing as 36:34 .. mp3 corrupt?

// TODO: getting a blank list from server results in error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'child' of undefined, source/Views.js:404
// TODO: popup a "No results received" toaster, for this and any other situation that gives no results?
// TODO: allow search only for artist/album/song? allow pagination, using artistOffset, albumOffset, songOffset?
// TODO: figure out what we're dragging and highlight it (maybe that should be in the ondrag .. )
// TODO: getRandomSongs.view can give us criteria based randomness
// TODO: Must support loading pages, using the offset parameter!
// TODO: we're going to need to create new views in the MusicView internal pane, so that it can nest selections deeply.. sigh.


I've been -really- sick this last week, and have used my little conscious time to fix some bugs in my other app, GVoice, I hope that I'll be able to get back to XO in the next week, because it's a really fun project.

* edit:
oh, yeah, there will be a menu that comes up when you tap a song, which should have some various options to it as well, since there isn't enough screen display on phones to support the nifty drag-and-drop playlist comfortably.

[hooah]

No feedback yet, just downloaded it. I just wanted to say thank you!

I bought a touchpad months ago and this is the one app I have been waiting anxiously for!

[eblade]

I put an update in last night that significantly enhanced the drag-and-drop functions. The whole drag-and-drop isn't 100% bulletproof but i think it's pretty close now. It does have some nasty performance problems if you try dragging in-out-and-all-around, which are annoying but not a killer at the moment to getting some more progress made.

Trying to make some cosmetic changes to the existing bits that I'm not a fan of..

On the bright side, I discovered that things in the Beta catalog do trigger the update notifications on the TouchPads and Pres, so I kind of like this distribution method.. except that it takes about an hour after it tells me it's available before it actually becomes available.

* edit: hmm. I just set out to see if I could put Jukebox mode in here real quick.. it's not going to be real quick. The entire Jukebox mode is ... vastly... different than the rest of everything else. That's going to require some time to design and implement.

I think I'll move the Lyrics thing to a pop-up display with a button for it, or something like that. I first need to find a song that the getLyrics call actually works on. Would be nice if the music information returned whether it had lyrics to get or not.

[eblade]

new update posted.

Should have performance... differences. I'm not sure if it's better, worse, or just.. different.
More consistent appearance amongst all the various places song information happens.
Search View should be nearly bullet proof - except for dragging and dropping. Don't drag anything out of the Search View, or you may break your Now Playing list, and have to Clear it.
Renamed Playlist to Now Playing
Tapping anything in Search View should work
BOLD highlights the currently playing song in Now Playing .. if it's there.
Tapping on a song in Now Playing should start/restart the player at that song
Drag-and-drop improved, --however-- the indicator that shows -where- you were dragging something into, completely broke, and has been removed while I re-work that.
Stopping playback, then restarting using the "Play" button in Now Playing should restart you on the song that you stopped play at
Prev/Next should be working, as long as you have stuff in your Now Playing

[eblade]

Hey guys, for the moment, since I've got 4 different forums that are poking at this to some degree, I've just made a post on my own site to hopefully coalesce the small amount of disjointed traffic

http://ericbla.de/gvoice-webos/?p=297

[eblade]

I don't know if everyone's getting updates from the Beta App Catalog or not, but I wanted to drop in and point out the latest update ..

0.1.15 up:
Major changes to the “Music” tab, should support theoretically unlimited depths, although it’s really rare to get any deeper than 4 views in. Back button on bottom of Music view, or Back-swipe on phones should be able to navigate their way out from anywhere.

Major enhancements to directory reading. It -should- be able to handle directories with 0 or 1 file in them, 0 or 1 subfolder, and a combination of music and subfolders. I have not actually been able to test the combination part out, as I have not managed to specifically locate an instance in my collection where the API actually says it happens.

Major performance improvements on TouchPad, however, it’s currently come at the cost of major performance on phones. There may be some tradeoffs made here.

Feedback desired, please

[eblade]

As is obvious, I'm still working out some of the UI stuffs, but I think I'm going to borrow a cue from the Android app, and have simply tapping a song in the list add it to the playlist at the bottom, but holding will bring up the menu of choices. And you'll always be able to drag-and-drop to place it specifically wherever you'd like in the list. How's that sound?

Also, is anyone using it on a phone besides me?

[eblade]

Video is now supported using the TouchPlayer app available via Preware.