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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?

#41

Post by stevenjohns »

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…

Uses >400mb of RAM for me and constantly uses about 5-10% disk usage.

It may very well be the ads responsible for at least a memory leak in my case.

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

#42

Post by mahouse »

mwcampbell wrote: post #34
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.

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

But it doesn't whip the llama's ass.

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

#44

Post by beachstartup »

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.

the mobile app has several modes in which it'll stop playback, and you need to pull it out of your pocket, and hit buttons or re-select your damn playlist before it starts your music again. also really simple shit like 'random or 'repeat' are impossible to find.

which is pretty much a giant fucking failure for a mobile app that's used by people in the car, bluetooth, people on the go, etc.

i wish i could say mobile itunes stayed useable, but it didn't either. we're basically choosing from the worst of the best, these days.

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

#45

Post by wlesieutre »

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…

Yes, it appears to be developed on CEF, which could explain the slowness.

"We decided to develop it on HTML and JS" is a lame excuse for slow mobile apps, and IMO it's even worse on desktop.

Related: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/

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

#46

Post by seanp2k2 »

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.

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

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

#47

Post by seanp2k2 »

drdaeman wrote: post #21
ploxiln wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... but (smart?) developer time is so expensive! and computers are so fast!

I get it's sarcasm, but the problem is that computers are not so fast yet. Developer vs computer time trade-off works only when software already works reasonably well. Which is not the case.

Back in Windows 98 days, it took a few seconds to load a screen of a native app sometimes. Now our computers are orders of magnitude faster, and webapps can still take a few seconds to load a screen. Progress?

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

#48

Post by seanp2k2 »

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…

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.

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

#49

Post by lobster_johnson »

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.

They did a refresh recently (just a few weeks ago) that installed a new renderer both for the playlist content view and for the playlist list view.

That resulted in a big performance boost, at least on my Core i7 MacBook Pro. With older machines I can guess that the performance might still not be that good.

However, this refresh also removed the ability to filter the playlist content view (cmd+F). The worst part of losing that feature is trying to find stuff in "Local Files". Very awkward.

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

#50

Post by touristtam »

GeorgeHahn wrote: post #40
mwcampbell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Tried the first two: they are pretty poor music player as it is in my opinion. The rest seems to be much more that a Spotify client.
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