Site Layout.Enhancement.Now Playing

FlatlandMounty · Post by **FlatlandMounty** » May Thu 11, 2006 2:04 pm

Would it be hard to add the Current Playing Song to the top of every page just under the flash banner? I know its only a minor convenience...but when you're surfing the forums, hear a song, and want to know what it is, you have to click Home, and leave the forum to get to it. And for some of the lower end users (depends on the machine for me) this is just a lot of unecessary loading.

Post by **js3901** » May Thu 11, 2006 2:08 pm

we used to have this in the past, but it would slow pages loading while browsing pages. Also, pages would refresh when the song changed, which made things frustrating while browsing. To avoid this, Sub made an Active Desktop Now Playing standalone. you can find info on this in the FAQs off the main pages. All you'd have to do while browsing is minimize the window to see what's playing.

but, maybe with Sub 2.0, this may make a comeback...

Millionaire2K · Post by **Millionaire2K** » May Fri 12, 2006 1:06 am

As long as the pages load at a good rate I would not mind this feature. However I don't think it's worth slow pages.

Post by **subsonic** » May Fri 12, 2006 12:49 pm

Eagle's correct. I had now playing in every page. I took it out to save serverload and it just didn't seem necessary. There is a now playing standalone page
http://www.subsonicradio.com/station/no ... dalone.php?

When I want to see what's playing I open it in another tab. If you're not using Tabbed browsing, it's time to get out of the dark ages and start.

But, I've decided to put the now playing into an i-frame as part of the upgrades. This will save users from the whole page refreshing as well as easially adding the now playing to the forum header.

Post by **js3901** » May Fri 12, 2006 4:56 pm

subsonic wrote:Eagle's correct. I had now playing in every page. I took it out to save serverload and it just didn't seem necessary. There is a now playing standalone page
http://www.subsonicradio.com/station/no ... dalone.php?
.

that was me who said that, not Eagle.

Post by **subsonic** » May Mon 15, 2006 11:05 am

Sometimes I look at the avatars and not the names. I see the gold badge and think Eagle

FlatlandMounty · Post by **FlatlandMounty** » May Mon 15, 2006 3:15 pm

have you ever heard of Ruby on Rails? http://www.rubyonrails.org/ I saw some huys give a presentation on a website they were building using this new technology. http://www.lafayette.oncurrent.com/ What Ruby does, is it allows the page to load only sections of the page rather than the entire page...like the playlist bar...the bar would be the onlything to reload...and not the flash header and the page content.

If you could do a mock-up of the site in Ruby you would actually be able to go between menus much easier because the menus that don't change from page to page never have to reload.

Its probably a lot of work...but I think its definately something you might want to look into for future versions.

Post by **spaulo** » May Mon 15, 2006 4:49 pm

Actually, just a quick correction... AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is the technology that lets web pages make requests to the server without refreshing the page (the "load only sections" end result you speak of)... Ruby on Rails is actually just a programming language (Ruby) and an applications development framework (Rails) for developing rich web apps that happen to work quite nicely with the Javascript XMLHttpRequest object (the pixie dust that makes AJAX "go").

And yes... if the site were to get all AJAXy that would be great. But it would take quite a bit of reworking... probably just short of "complete start-over"... from its current PHP codebase.

FlatlandMounty · Post by **FlatlandMounty** » May Mon 15, 2006 5:39 pm

oh, that's right...Ruby on Rails was the language...I do remember them saying that they used AJAX...I'm not the best at programming. My bad

Post by **spaulo** » May Mon 15, 2006 5:59 pm

subsonic wrote:But, I've decided to put the now playing into an i-frame as part of the upgrades. This will save users from the whole page refreshing as well as easially adding the now playing to the forum header.

On the topic of AJAX, sub... please figure out how to do this with some javascript and a DIV and not an iframe... frames = bad.

Post by **Dr. Ravenscroft** » May Tue 16, 2006 6:15 pm

I have to say thank you Sub for the new additions to the smilies:

:arial:

I love them especially the mickey ears one.

Post by **subsonic** » May Wed 17, 2006 11:54 am

I'm way ahead of you guys. "AJAX" useage is already part of the plan for SR 2.0

MouseMan · Post by **MouseMan** » May Wed 17, 2006 1:15 pm

FlatlandMounty wrote:...but when you're surfing the forums, hear a song, and want to know what it is, you have to click Home, and leave the forum to get to it....

I just use a relatively low tech solution. Using a tabbed browser I open one up to the forums and one showing the now playing. That way I just have to click a tab if i want to know the current song or what's coming up.

FlatlandMounty · Post by **FlatlandMounty** » May Wed 17, 2006 3:37 pm

Awesome dude...switching the site to AJAX will take a lot of work...and I think we all appreciate what you do for us.

Post by **subsonic** » May Thu 18, 2006 11:23 am

Looking at what features I want to add and how my code was done I realized I'll want to redo most of the code. I'm much more into seperating the business logic from the presentation. Which the current code doesn't quite do. This site is also a place where I get to practice new technology. It can be fun to add stuff. Hopefully, this time around, I'll make the code more modular so it'll be easier to add functionallity in the future.

Subsonic Radio

Site Layout.Enhancement.Now Playing

Site Layout.Enhancement.Now Playing

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