Page last modified 15:10, 2 Oct 2008 by stevel
Improve mashTape
Table of contents
- 1. Goals
- 2. Services
- 3. New Features
- 4. APIs
- 5. Wireframes
- 5.1. General
- 5.2. Pane types
- 5.2.1. Artist info
- 5.2.2. Photos
- 5.2.3. Videos
- 5.2.4. News
- 5.2.5. No content found
- 5.2.6. Nothing playing
- 5.3. Preferences
- 6. Production Notes
- 7. References
Goals
mashTape is cool because it collects and displays information that is scattered all over the web about the media item that is being played back and presents it in a serendipitous way.
- Better performance (should be less resource-intensive)
- Flexible configuration/display (show only what I want to see)
- Less janky UI
Services
- Artist information - eg: bio, photo, discography, related links, tags, members (user selects a single service)
- Photos (aggregate services)
- Videos (aggregate services)
- RSS (aggregate services)
The following services should be removed because there are stand-alone add-ons that offer functionality that is more complete than what can be offered in mashTape.
- Concerts/events
- Lyrics
- Tags
- none (I'm thinking we should address this in the last.fm add-on instead of mashTape, thoughts?)
New Features
- User has the ability to select a set of services for mashTape to display
- Certain service types require users to select a single service
- Certain service types support users to select n number of services
- Certain service types will create its own tab and display that don't mix with other services
- Add-on developers can create add-ons that extend the services that mashTape understands
- A few example services will be shipped with mashTape as example code
- Documentation about the API
- The content in the display pane should scale to the size of the pane
- Scale in height when the user resizes the pane using the resizer
- Scale in height when the user maximizes the pane to take up the whole content area when the maximize button is clicked
- Scale in width as the main window is resized
- Scale in width when the service pane and/or right sidebar is shown or hidden
APIs
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| 1 | 2 | Allow developer to create and add-on that provides content for an existing tab pane | How the content provider is used will depend on the type of the tab pane - eg: artist info supports a single content provider at a time but the news tab pane supperts multiple at a time. | ? | |
| 2 | 1 | Allow developer to create and add-on that provides additional content for one of the 4 panes | test to ensure the documentation is live. | ||
| 1 | 1 | Additional mashTape providers should be enabled automatically after install | 1580 | ||
| 1 | 1 | Additional mashTape providers should be automatically disabled and removed from mashTape if they are disabled or uninstalled from the add-ons manager | 1581, 1582 | ||
| 1 | 1 | mashTape preferences are updated to reflect all available content providers and tab panes without developers having to take specific action | 1583 | ||
| 1 | 0 | Developer is able to add their add-on in the mashTape content provider list on the add-on site | Adding the 'mashtape' tag to the add-on will accomplish this | Nest test covered elsewhere | |
| 1 | 1 | mashTape default height should be same as AlbumArt | 194px apparently is the right height | 1553 |
Wireframes
- Display pane vs media page
- Using a media page will give us more screen realestate to display whatever we want to display but it will be at the cost of serendipity. Also, a media page is attached to a media list which is going to have too much metadata compared to just focusing on the media item that is being played. Let's continue using display panes. We'll see about adding a way to allow users to maximize/minimize the display pane.
- Bottom display pane vs right display pane
- Not too many add-ons use the bottom pane - mashTape should be displayed in the bottom pane so that is can coexist with other add-ons well.
- HTML vs XUL
- We have the ablity to implmenet each pane using XUL and/or HTML. Because we want the photo pane to animate, we should see about using some open source off the shelf js solution and HTML to implement that. The feed pane could benefit from some animation and effects but it is a nice to have. All other panes can be implemented using XUL.
General
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| 2 | 2 | HTML-specific CSS file to match the feather | Create a CSS file that gets shipped with the feather that add-on developers can include in HTML documents to make the styling match. The CSS file should limit rules to things like colors, background-colors/images, borders. | not testable | |
| 1 | 1 | Open all links in the main browser | All links - in XUL or in HTML - should open in the main borwser when clicked on. If the link is clicked on in the media tab then open the page in a new tab. If the link is clicked on while in a tab other than the media tab then update the browser for the selected tab with new content. | 1548 | |
| | 2 | 1 | Show all dates in "n units ago" format | The tooltip/title value for the time should releave the real data/time value. (The birdhouse has a JS date-to-ago converter that Blake wrote a while back which might be reusable?) | 1549 |
| 1 | 1 | Don't refresh mashTape when the track changes and the artist for the previous track and the artist for the current track are the same | Artist info & photos won't refresh, but RSS & Flash should refresh so as to pull in any additional new content there | 1550 | |
| 1 | 1 | When the sequence of music ends, or the user hits stop, mashTape should switch to "Nothing Playing" | 1551 |
Pane types
Artist info
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| | 1 | 2 | Display artist information from the user-defined (in prefs) service for the currently playing track | 1542 | |
| 1 | 1 | Discography & bio should have "Read More" links to expand if there is more detail | 1555 | ||
| 1 | 1 | Generic filler for when no info is found | Show a generic artist image if no photo is found. If no bio is found, give a link to allow users to edit and create a bio @ last.fm | 1557 | |
| 1 | 2 | Make a default artist info provider | Collect the artist metadata from a number of sources.
This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1542 |
Photos
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| | 1 | 2 | Display relevant photos from all enabled photo services for the currently playing track | Each photo should display the following metadata
| 1558 |
| 2 | 1 | Expose controls for next photo, previou photo, pause/resume slideshow | 1559 | ||
| 1 | 1 | Make Flickr a photo service | This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1569 | |
| 1 | 1 | Mouse wheel should scroll the photo stream | 1560 | ||
| 1 | 1 | Clicking individual photos should open the photo detail page in the main browser | 1561 |
Videos
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| | 1 | 1 | Display a column of thumbnails for relevant videos from all video services for the currently playing track | Each row should include:
| 1563 |
| 1 | 1 | Display video and full video metadata for the selected thumbnail | Details include:
| 1564 | |
| 2 | 1 | Scale video to either full height or full width depending on display pane size | Not sure exactly what the rule for this would be. We can move the metadata to the right of the video or below to support the resizing. | 1374, 1376 | |
| 1 | 1 | Make YouTube a video service | This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1365 | |
| 1 | 1 | Make Yahoo Music a video service | This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1366 | |
| 1 | 1 | Auto-select newest video upon load | When the user changes tracks, display a loading image until all video providers return results, then pre-select the newest (chronologically) video | 1567 | |
| 1 | 1 | Index should be sorted chronologically | 1568 |
News
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| | 1 | 1 | Display a column of news titles for relevant news from all news feed services for the currently playing track | Each row should include:
| 1570 |
| 1 | 1 | Display full news article for the selected news title | Details include:
| 1571 | |
| 2 | 1 | Make Digg a news service | This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1573 | |
| 2 | 1 | Make Hype Machine a news service | This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1574 | |
| 1 | 1 | Make Google News a news service | This provider should ship with mashTape - it should be disable-able but not uninstall-able. | 1575 | |
| 1 | 1 | Auto-select newest article upon load | When
the user changes tracks, display a loading image until all RSS
providers return results, then pre-select the newest (chronologically)
article | 1576 | |
| 1 | 1 | Index should be sorted chronologically | 1577 |
No content found
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| | 1 | 1 | Display blank pane when mashTape was unable to find content for the currently playing track for a given tab pane. | The text should read "Unable to find $(pane name) for currently playing track" where $(pane name) would be "artist info", "photos", "videos", "news" | 1545 |
Nothing playing
| ID | P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase |
| | | 1 | Display blank pane when playback state is not play/paused | 1546 | |
| 1 | Don't display the "Nothing playing" pane between track changes | Instead of going from something -> nothing playing -> something, mashTape should present the transition between track changes in a seamless way. | 1547 |
Preferences
| P | Cost | Title | Details | Testcase | |
| | 2 | 1 | Each tab can be enabled/disabled | 1425 | |
| 2 | 1 | Each service for a given tab can be enabled/disabled | 1428 | ||
| 1 | 1 | Display a link to a listing of all available mashTape content providers | The link should point to the add-on site with a listing of add-ons with a specific tag which results in a list of content providers for mashTape. | 1578 | |
| 1 | 0 | Ability to uninstall 3rd party content providers | 3rd party content providers can be uninstalled through the add-on manager. | 1579 |
Production Notes
The following graphic asses need to be created:
- tab icons (need normal/no-content states)
- artist bio
- photos
- videos
- news
- preferences
- open source page button
- slideshow
- play button
- pause button
- scroll right button
- scroll left button
- mashTape service add-on icon
References
- 25 Music APIs @ programmableweb
- Slideshow candidates
- mashTape source repository: http://hg.mozdev.org/mashtape/
- Hourly trunk XPI builds are available at http://whacked.net/mashtape-trunk.xpi
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Add test for case when user stops playback to show "nothing playing" in mashtape. edited 16:49, 1 Oct 2008