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How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

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Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#31

Post by DigitalSea »

conradfr wrote: post #22
madsushi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent removal of the system tray icon is anti-user. It provided users with easy access to Play/Pause from the system tray, but that meant users spent less time in the app, so the system tray icon was removed completely.

Infuriating. It's 2015 and my Winamp is still more usable than a "new" music player. Why do they care if I spend more or less time in the app if I'm a premium user, surely that can't be the reason for this regression.

It's 2015 and Winamp is still the only music player that really whips the llamas ass.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#32

Post by to3m »

1_player wrote: post #16
noxToken wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that the massive start-up time for the Windows client. A fresh instance Spotify from a rebooted machine takes ages to gain full functionality. If you quit in the middle of a good playlist, most of the time you'll be able to continue playing from where that playlist left off. If you opened Spotify to find a song or move to another playlist, you'll be waiting a while. I just started Spotify with a stopwatch: 2:2…

Wow.. I agree that Spotify isn't the most lightweight application, but it doesn't feel much heavier than, say, Chrome on my Linux installation. Are you on a mechanical hard drive perhaps? The network performance though is quite bad, searching for some song often fails or just is very slow to load and render.

It would take a bit more than using a hard disk rather than an SSD to create a 3 minute load time. It must be downloading the entire program over the internet every time.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#33

Post by DigitalSea »

I really like the approach that Spotify take to working on new features, the squads idea is quite good. I think it is important that people occasionally break out of their cliques and work with new people, I have found based on personal experience that working with the same people day-in-day-out will eventually give you tunnel vision. You stop learning from those around you, eventually the hive-mind becomes one and there is little free-thinking. Breaking out and working with another squad I think could be beneficial to Spotify.

This is where the praise ends. As a Spotify Premium user, I love the service, but the interface as many others have pointed out has really gone downhill. I don't know who is leading the UX squad over at Spotify, but the app needs considerable work. High startup times, incredible amounts of frame rate lag and removal of the system tray icon. What is going on over there? I have also noticed that the app can play a song quickly, but browsing and searching is incredibly slow (even on a fast connection).

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#34

Post by mwcampbell »

DigitalSea wrote: post #31
conradfr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infuriating. It's 2015 and my Winamp is still more usable than a "new" music player. Why do they care if I spend more or less time in the app if I'm a premium user, surely that can't be the reason for this regression.

It's 2015 and Winamp is still the only music player that really whips the llamas ass.

foobar2000 is pretty lean and mean too, though also Windows only.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#35

Post by Dewie3 »

conradfr wrote: post #22
madsushi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent removal of the system tray icon is anti-user. It provided users with easy access to Play/Pause from the system tray, but that meant users spent less time in the app, so the system tray icon was removed completely.

Infuriating. It's 2015 and my Winamp is still more usable than a "new" music player. Why do they care if I spend more or less time in the app if I'm a premium user, surely that can't be the reason for this regression.

It's 2015 and I can't "alt-tab" into spotify in order to pause/play by pressing space; I have to click somewhere in the upper half of the interface in order to "refocus", or the spacebar just scrolls down. Which is useful for something, I guess.

Though this is on Ubuntu, and Spotify is still a beta app on that platform last I checked. I don't think I've had this problem on Windows.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#36

Post by Dewie3 »

odiroot wrote: post #5

I have a feeling that's not the case for the Linux version. It looks completely different than other platforms and is also build against Qt libraries.

Huh, I thought the Linux client was some kind of web-stuff too. It certainly feels that way.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#37

Post by goldfire »

noxToken wrote: post #14
LMAlVvQjSGj wrote: post #4

The Spotify desktop client has seen a massive regression since 2008 or 2009. It's incredible how they managed to make it so unresponsive. Scrolling in a playlist is like playing a game at 10 fps. It's uncomfortable and not worth it. Ads are worse as well. I've seen countless malware ads in the bottom banner.

Add to that the massive start-up time for the Windows client. A fresh instance Spotify from a rebooted machine takes ages to gain full functionality. If you quit in the middle of a good playlist, most of the time you'll be able to continue playing from where that playlist left off. If you opened Spotify to find a song or move to another playlist, you'll be waiting a while. I just started Spotify with a stopwatch: 2:2…

Something is wrong there. I just tried the same tasks on my system; from clicking the shortcut to the Browse view rendering was 5 seconds, the live search displays suggestions almost as fast as I can type more characters, and the full results appear within a second. I am running it off an SSD, but that's not enough to account for all that time. I don't have a guess what it is, but something else is going on.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#38

Post by _asummers »

Dewie3 wrote: post #35
conradfr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infuriating. It's 2015 and my Winamp is still more usable than a "new" music player. Why do they care if I spend more or less time in the app if I'm a premium user, surely that can't be the reason for this regression.

It's 2015 and I can't "alt-tab" into spotify in order to pause/play by pressing space; I have to click somewhere in the upper half of the interface in order to "refocus", or the spacebar just scrolls down. Which is useful for something, I guess. Though this is on Ubuntu, and Spotify is still a beta app on that platform last I checked. I don't think I've had this problem on Windows.

This functionality works on OSX, so it must be limited to the Ubuntu app.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#39

Post by detaro »

91bananas wrote: post #28
wlesieutre wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should a music player be anywhere near as heavy as Chrome? A web browser is a pretty immensely complicated thing (CSS, DOM rendering, Javascript JIT compiler, etc.). Similar criticisms have been made of iTunes over the years (though I find it's not bad in the current version). Things like laggy scrolling are a bit understandable there, since they've defaulted to the grid of album covers view for a while. But Spotify…

I assume this thing is just a web app rendered in their "browser"? So doesn't it need to do all the things you list? Needs css to layout the DOM, needs to parse and execute javascript. I'm a recent convert from grooveshark, so I've been using the spotlight web player and I find it a pretty nice web app to be honest. I haven't dealt with any of the actual desktop clients yet, so don't know if anything I said above is…

> I assume this thing is just a web app rendered in their "browser"? So doesn't it need to do all the things you list? Needs css to layout the DOM, needs to parse and execute javascript.

From a users perspective, that is an implementation detail and doesn't matter. A users only cares if his music player feels slow or not.

Re: How is Javascript used within the Spotify desktop application?

#40

Post by GeorgeHahn »

mwcampbell wrote: post #30
touristtam wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that could offer the basis for an alternative client. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. :)

An alternative desktop client using libspotify and a non-web GUI toolkit would be much more interesting.

Very true. There are a few options in that space: Clementine (https://www.clementine-player.org/), Tomahawk (https://www.tomahawk-player.org/), Mopidy (https://www.mopidy.com/), Fidelify (http://fidelify.net/, not OSS), Soundbounce (http://soundbounce.org/). (Raise a glass to SOVND, my personal project that I killed when I got fed up with libspotify.)
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