Help Save Somesongs!

Discuss the many little competitions/projects that spring up amongst the Song Fight community.
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fluffy
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Post by fluffy »

Yeah, I use that thing on my site and it's kind of neat, though it might have trouble integrating with the Somesongs layout, what with the whole dynamic sizing aspect of it. A better approach might be to just have an IFRAME on the page to house the player and have the play link's target attribute set to the IFRAME (although this assumes people have Quicktime or similar installed).
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Post by Lunkhead »

although this assumes people have Quicktime or similar installed
I think if you want to try to get the sound to actually play -in- the browser, Flash is really the best approach, as it will work for pretty much everybody. No Quicktime, Windows Media, etc. required.

And the layout won't be an issue, as the playtagger just inserts the play/stop html before the a element for the link to the mp3. I just pasted the playtagger JavaScript into the Firebug console with a somesongs song page loaded to see how it would look and it's fine. Not great, but it's definitely not breaking the layout in any way.
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Post by Spud »

Flash only works if you have Flash. Quicktime only works if you have Quicktime. There is no difference, really. Except Flash doesn't force-feed you iTunes.
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Post by Lunkhead »

Flash is vastly more ubiquitous than Quicktime. Flash works on Linux. Etc. There are significant differences.
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Post by Spud »

I am just for a separation of church and state, Lunkhead. Just give the damn file and let me play it however I want.
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Post by tuuur »

I'm with spud here.
Last edited by tuuur on Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by roymond »

Spud wrote:I am just for a separation of church and state, Lunkhead. Just give the damn file and let me play it however I want.
And don't hide the direct link. Lots of us download songs to listen on the commute and if DownThemAll can't find the file it's a pretty long commute.
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Post by Hoblit »

fluffy wrote:A better approach might be to just have an IFRAME on the page to house the player and have the play link's target attribute set to the IFRAME
Did you just suggest a frame? A frame in a website? really?

( I have NOTHING against frames and I love iframes as an alternative to asp include files <a href="http://www.sportszone2.com" target="resource window">Sportszone 2</a>)
Spud wrote:I am just for a separation of church and state, Lunkhead. Just give the damn file and let me play it however I want.
I'm with you on this and I'll take it to the streets in an ANTI-FLASH rally. At the very least, a sit in. KEEP FLASH out of my dynamic and otherwise fully functional scripting experience.
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Post by Lunkhead »

Man, you guys are -way- overreacting. I thought it was pretty clear that I was talking about -adding- a tiny little Flash player to the page, right next to the mp3 link, -which would still be there-. Did you even look at the script I was talking about to see how it worked before having some kind of knee-jerk anti-Flash reaction? I certainly don't love Flash when people use it as their whole Web site, but it is the best way to embed audio/video into a Web page these days, in terms of most ease of use for the most users. And the script I suggested would only involve adding -1 line- to -1 page- of somesongs. No rewriting of HTML, no IFRAME, no downloading anything, installing anything, etc. etc. So it seemed like a "least effort" way to increase the usability of the site. With this script you could just click the play button on the page and start writing your comment while the song plays, without downloading the file first, or opening it in a new window or tab or different program. Personally that would make it much easier for me to listen to and rate many songs in one batch. I guess I will just make a bookmarklet containing the script to use myself, whatever.
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Post by fluffy »

Hoblit wrote:
fluffy wrote:A better approach might be to just have an IFRAME on the page to house the player and have the play link's target attribute set to the IFRAME
Did you just suggest a frame? A frame in a website? really?
I suggested an IFRAME, which is a very different beast than a frameset. The point to an IFRAME is being able to embed a changeable remote page into another page, which is a much cleaner model than lots of other things (and which works VERY well with ordinary HTML semantics without requiring any use of Javascript et al, while also not breaking other usability things such as download managers, 'open link in new tab,' etc.). While an IFRAME is prone to abuse it also has many legitimate uses (unlike traditional frames which are almost never the right answer). Also, an IFRAME is often a better solution than AJAX, and it has a nice advantage over inlined content in that it separates things out.

You probably see IFRAMEs all the time without realizing it. For example, Google AdWords (and many other ad providers). Also, Google Maps uses a hidden IFRAME for its server request marshaling (although that's more a hack to do AJAXy things without XmlHttpRequest, which wasn't widely-available when Google Maps was written).
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Yeah, this reaction is a bit puzzling. The del.icio.us playtagger doesn't make it so that the original link is inaccessible. Like I said, I use it on my sites, and I have never had a single complaint about it (except from Spud, who dislikes the lack of fine-grained playback controls). My only concern about it was just how it would integrate with the existing layout since its dynamic sizing would probably cause the table to go all wonky in some circumstances.
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Post by Reist »

I think somesongs would be easier to use if the front page had a jukebox like over at FAWM. Mind you - a jukebox of the newest 15 songs with star buttons on the side and a review box.

I'm starting to wonder if this has any relevance, but I like the idea of it, so I might as well hit post.
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Post by Lunkhead »

Here is what it would look like:

Image

The script just adds that blue square with the triangle in it. When you click the button, it looks like this:

Image

EDIT: Of course, there are many more ways the UI could possibly be improved, but I mentioned this one specifically because of how little effort it would take to implement, keeping in mind that Jeff doesn't have much/any time to work on somesongs. This involves adding -1 line- to -1 page-, as I've said. Other ideas are great, but if they involve more work than they, they become less and less likely to actually happen, I think.
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Post by fluffy »

Oh, I thought you were talking about adding it to the table view on the front page, which is what I thought needs it the most, and the problem not being the widget in its collapsed state but its expanded state (after you click the play button). Actually it makes a lot of sense to put it on the individual song page, yeah (and an iframe makes no sense in that context).
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Post by Hoblit »

Lunkhead wrote:Man, you guys are -way- overreacting. I thought it was pretty clear that I was talking about -adding- a tiny little Flash player to the page, right next to the mp3 link, -which would still be there-. Did you even look at the script I was talking about to see how it worked before having some kind of knee-jerk anti-Flash reaction?
Guilty.
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Post by Lunkhead »

Lunkhead wrote:Simply including their javascript into the song info page would add a play/stop button next to the mp3 link, so you could play the mp3 right in the page using Flash.
I guess I should have been clearer somehow? :roll:
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Post by Reist »

So the little blue box would go on the song info page? I think that would help a lot. But if the blue box is the play box, should the old play button become a "download" button? There's no point having 2 play buttons.
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Post by fluffy »

I saw "playtagger" and overlooked "song info page." Sorry about that.
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Post by Märk »

Okay, I did my part. I commented/rated every song on the front page. I feel a bit sick now, but as long as egos were stroked/crushed, I guess it's worth it, right? I'm just mad that there were no Frankie songs to downvote on the front page :(
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Post by jute gyte »

Somesongs technical difficulty: Several times now I've had songs hidden with links that are valid and haven't been modified for years. It happened again today with my "Driving", "Violet Wants it this Way" and "Soft and Wet". These links were in no way dead. What's the deal?
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Post by j$ »

Ah me too. my guess was that it's almost certainly human error/ spite, but I also got a dead link warning about one of my songs that wasn't, and isn't, a dead link. It was no problem to'unhide' it but if Jute is suffering too maybe it's a glitch or something.
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Post by madtho »

It doesn't look to me like somesongs is destined to be saved.

Like a previous poster said, it's lack of participation. That may be obvious, but very few people are using the site for its' intent.

I've had a couple songs up there for a couple weeks, and they're still in the top 15 and not up to the required 5. I understand that the likes of Tuur are getting voted, because he's doing the good work to keep the thing going, but it looks like there are (maybe) barely 20 people even interested.

I'm not looking for any kind of ego boost or anything. I'd just like a dialogue about music that includes my music. Despite the bump from this thread, it's just not something folks are into keeping up with. too bad.

-mad

PS. I also keep getting dead link emails for things that have never moved. bummer.
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Post by tuuur »

madtho wrote:It doesn't look to me like somesongs is destined to be saved.

Like a previous poster said, it's lack of participation. That may be obvious, but very few people are using the site for its' intent.

I've had a couple songs up there for a couple weeks, and they're still in the top 15 and not up to the required 5. I understand that the likes of Tuur are getting voted, because he's doing the good work to keep the thing going, but it looks like there are (maybe) barely 20 people even interested.

I'm not looking for any kind of ego boost or anything. I'd just like a dialogue about music that includes my music. Despite the bump from this thread, it's just not something folks are into keeping up with. too bad.

-mad

PS. I also keep getting dead link emails for things that have never moved. bummer.
I completely agree. It even kept me a bit from rating or commenting every song that comes up, out of thinking.
Will catch up again now.
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