New Indie Shuffle Design!
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Consider this both a Yayblog! and a call for any feedback, but I wanted to do a little "blog promotion" for the fact that we just launched a pretty huge overhaul to Indie Shuffle! We've been working on this since October. Much of the changes are on the back-end, but there are also a lot of notable front-end changes.
Some of the cool changes are as follows:
Functionality:
— The site now is cross-browser compatible, working well in IE (lots of glitches before)
— The MP3 player now sports HTML5 support for iPhones, iPads and iPods
— When there are 10 seconds to go in an MP3 and the page is on the verge of changing, a little popup notification will inform you and allow you to avoid the page changing
Playlist:
— The black MP3 bar has been moved to the top of the page and joined with the playlist (whereas it was much like Hypem's)
— The playlist now shows at all times (whereas it needed to be clicked to appear)
— As you scroll, the playlist stays visible at the top of your page
— Overlay on first landing gives a bit of instruction as to how to use it...essentially a huge "play" button!
— Mouse-over of images shows you information about the post
Filters:
— Sidebar now includes a Most Popular/Discussed/Recent filter
— Homepage now includes a genres filter
Additional changes:
— New navigation bar
— New color schemes
— New social networking areas
— Tweet button! -
looks good, jason.
i'm loving simple black, white & gray recently .. -
Lookin' pretty snazzy! I like that mp3 toolbar/player.
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absolutely love it! my favorite part is the pop up warning you the page is gonna change. as cool as the playlist function is, usually I just want to go through recent posts in chronological order, so that is very handy
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@timnuoa -- From a coding perspective, it's very hard to have the "exception" rules by which the homepage plays chronologically, but all individual posts have this playlist that carries them through from one to the next. I debated having a little pop-up option that let people choose if they wanted to listen chronologically or in the similar-artists-playlist format...maybe it'll work out down the line. For now, it's somewhat like we have our own little mini shuffler.fm within the website (though to be fair, we already had it before they launched!) =D
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Absolutely amazing. I wish I had the skills/time to code something like this up. I'm going to be spending a lot (more) time on indieshuffle with the new design.
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Very encouraging words, Malleus :-)
My next mission is to try figure out how to increase the number of pages that people click on. I think it gets somewhat lost in translation that as you browse, the song doesn't stop -- right now there isn't enough to click on outside of the top MP3 player. -
I am really, really impressed with the thought you've put into really assembling a concept, rather than just making a site look nice - it's like a curated version of shuffler.fm.
You could argue for ages (and I bet you have) about the precise ins and outs of this - what will delight people and what will annoy them - but I am nevertheless really impressed with the whole thing. -
i already told you, but i'll say it again: i think this is fantastic. i agree with malleus too, it definitely encourages prolonged and more frequent indieshuffle visits. well done.
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It's a very cool concept you've got going there, browsing can now very be a flowing experience rather that just clicking around. I'm scared I'll find a song I really like and then get sucked in and lose a couple of hours :P
What I did notice is the lack of download links (I haven't seen the previous version so I don't know if that's always been there), even on some free tracks - is this just a blanket thing you've done for legal reasons, or are there some different motives behind it? -
I love it and even more so that I can use it on my iPad and works perfect
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Mmm, I need to sort out mobile support, 7% of my readers are being somewhat neglected when it comes to mobile viewing...
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Thanks for the feedback, guys!
Caleb -- the download links have been that way for a while now. It is precautionary: I don't want to be sharing music that we don't have express permission to work with, and believe it or not, we actually work closely with 95% of the artists we publish to figure out what they do and do not want shared. By default, though, album reviews are set to not share the MP3. The other rationale is that we want to keep people on our site -- it's great when they come back to us for that song :-)
Naturally, there are a lot of glitches appearing. This was all expected. The browsing experience isn't where I want it to be, and there's actually been a dip in pageviews / visit, which was an anticipated sacrifice for improved user interface. Besides all the errors (which I'm getting feedback on left and right), a couple major changes we're going to make:
-- Clicking album artwork in the MP3 player will prompt to either "Play" or simply "View"
-- Top of post will have better access to "Next" / "Previous" / "Shuffle" to encourage users to click around more
-- Sidebar is currently showing most popular ever. We're working hard to fix that, but I wanted to role out the redesign while I had my developer's attention :-D
+ lots more
Unfortunately I've been working my ass off at my day-job )-: -
@Jason - I think you've done a wonderful job with the site. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan/follower (too much happening on the site and too sophisticated for my OCD addled brain) BUT that's not a criticism, it's just me.
The main thing I wanted to say though is I give you tons of credit for your policy regarding sharing mp3's and working closely with the artists. I imagine, it would be easy for a site as popular and powerful as yours, to try to skirt around those issues. But I also can imagine because of the popularity, one would have to be very careful about dealing with mp3's. Nevertheless, I admire the hard work, the policy about mp3's even though the site is too difficult for me to use because of my fucked-up brain. I, sort of, consider your site as a hybrid of a traditional music blog and professional music website. And I mean that as a compliment.
Excellent job, Bro!
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