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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?

#51

Post by JohnTHaller »

wlesieutre wrote: post #18
1_player wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Considering that a good many "music player" are basically written atop browser rendering engines... they're equivalent in some ways. Plus, they have the added overhead of checking tens of thousands of files for changes (if they do so on each start as some do).

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

#52

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#53

Post by pen2l »

StavrosK wrote: post #29
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.

Winamp is just the best piece of software ever written, ever. I still lament the fact that it doesn't run properly on Linux.

xmms, audacious, etc.

When I went from win -> nix so many years, all I wanted was a music player with the interface that of winamp2. xmms gave that and I was happy.

But then I discovered mpd+ncmpcpp. Really great if you have large music collections, have been using it since.

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

#55

Post by colordrops »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #48
AustinScript wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm - I haven't really noticed any unresponsive-ness but I also am a paid subscriber, I wonder if the ads are responsible for the slowness? The spotify mobile app has some odd behavior from time to time. The UI will continue to respond to my actions but nothing actually happens for 20 seconds, during that time i'll click on several different songs attempting to get them to play. Finally, for whatever reason, the app…

Spotify and SoundCloud are testaments to how users will endure whatever awful UX you give them as long as they're getting enough value from your thing.

The soundcloud mobile app is not that bad, at least on Android. It has the best audio scrubbing of any app I've used. The UI is super simple and made to work at a distance, e.g. while mounted in a card holder.

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

#56

Post by Nr7 »

AustinScript wrote: post #11
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.

Hmm - I haven't really noticed any unresponsive-ness but I also am a paid subscriber, I wonder if the ads are responsible for the slowness? The spotify mobile app has some odd behavior from time to time. The UI will continue to respond to my actions but nothing actually happens for 20 seconds, during that time i'll click on several different songs attempting to get them to play. Finally, for whatever reason, the app…

I'm also a paid subscriber and for me the newest version is clearly slower than the previous one, both on Windows & Mac.

Luckily there is a way to downgrade to the earlier version: http://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/2y239w/a_guide_to_d... (The second method works for me)

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

#58

Post by sosuke »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #46
DigitalSea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also, no other music player has the MMD3 skin. Best top-bar music player ever.

That brought back some great memories thanks!

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

#59

Post by nindalf »

cwyers wrote: post #19
devicenull wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also can't ctrl-f within a page, which makes finding things really annoying.

You USED to be able to. It's very annoying that that feature is gone.

I can't say I've experienced any of the complaints about slowness that the other people have mentioned but this regression has really annoyed me. You could search for a song within a playlist and now you can't. I have no idea why they would remove it.

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

#60

Post by techofdoom »

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.

But, its using JS! FTW! That's awesome right, I mean, those awesome "devs" managed to take a sucky browser tech, and drag down a native app by insisting on shoving in there. I think they should have inserted Node as well, and Go, and Rust, just because.
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