Ask HN: Would like some help etc regarding a site I am working on. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would like some help etc regarding a site I am working on.

3 pointsJonovono5 comments

Hey HN! First time post after creeping the forums for awhile. Love the community here.

I have been working on a site for a little while now as a side project. (can access it at www.tunesicles.com). I originally only built it because I wanted a way to quickly listen to songs from youtube or load entire albums of artists and what not easily. The people I have showed it to enjoyed it so I decided to polish it up a little bit. I don't have much expertise with design or CSS at all and I am fairly new to web development in general.

So I thought i'd show you guys what I have so far and get some comments on it and hopefully finish it up and show it as a show hn.

Right now it's not done - it loads pretty slow and I am not entirely happy with the design. Also there are other errors and little things to fix up but the basic functionality I was going for works so I would like to get some comments/feedback/help on those things I am having trouble with before I work on it again after midterms!

Cool concept, I like it. As far as UI/UX goes, what stands out to me right away is how small everything is. You have to keep in mind that everything should be extremely easy for users to click and find. Checkout grooveshark, their elements are all about 200% of yours. They also anchor the controls to the bottom of the page so that no matter the browser's size it'll be simple to find and incorporate into the overall design. When you resize your website, it no longer displays properly.

Design-wise: well there isn't a design really. Are you working on a logo/brand? That's probably the biggest thing I notice, lack of any identity. Design elements would follow that.

Again, cool website, good job!

Awesome thanks! Ya I am just using the default buttons from jQuery theme so the buttons and everything are small.

Thanks for the input. I have not worked on a logo as of yet. Busy right now with finals, but after I am hoping to track down someone to help with a design.

I really like it. I love how easy it is to navigate the possible youtube videos just using the search box. A few comments:

-it's not really clear what the on/off button does in the top right

-I think the black bar at the top is ugly, I think you should just leave the social connections on the gray background

-the logos of youtube/musicbrainz look weird on the right, maybe try moving them to the bottom?

-the main box seems to be a little off center

-the name and descrition don't work for youtube videos, as seen here: http://cl.ly/2u1w1v260c1Y2V2k2E34. I assume this is because youtube videos don't have an artist and title. Maybe you could parse it from the title or just make it a little clearer that those fields are empty because it's a youtube video

-what is the value proposition for registering? what do I gain? that's not clear

-where does the "normal search" draw from?

Hopefully those don't come off as too mean, I'm just trying to give some honest feedback.

Nice work overall though! I really like it.

EDIT: Also, skipping forward in a song doesn't seem to work.

Awesome thanks for the feedback.

-I might move the logos for youtube etc to an about page or something - just got to make sure that fits with youtube guidelines otherwise i'll play around with the placement.

- And yeah it is because I can not get that information from youtube. Wasn't sure how best to show that. Maybe just say "Unavailable - from youtube" or something. I could try parsing it, that may be unreliable - but do able.

- If you register you can save playlists. I should say that I suppose! But ya you can save all your playlists and it will be like itunes. It also has a library of all the songs so you can save songs and all that. Although you can still click share when making a playlist and get a playlist url, saving allows you to see all the playlists you want saved - I guess. I plan to make a video explaining some things later.

- Normal search draws from musicbrainz, last fm and youtube. The songs are from youtube (searching for songs using the musicbrainz DB wasn't very reliable). So all the album names and artists are from musicbrainz.org and if you click "top songs" those are the top songs from last.fm. Musicbrainz provides an open source database so that is what I use to get the names of albums/artists/songs.

- No that is awesome. I am not done it yet but wanted to get some feedback for what I could fix and all.

And skipping seems to be working fine for me. Do you get an error in the console when you click next? The shuffle button doesn't work yet I just have it sitting there with no functionality right now.

I don't get an error when I hit next, it just freezes and sound stops playing.

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