{"id":271,"date":"2006-06-18T06:33:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-18T12:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/archives\/2006\/06\/18\/pandora-ui-approaching-perfection\/"},"modified":"2006-06-18T06:33:17","modified_gmt":"2006-06-18T12:33:17","slug":"pandora-ui-approaching-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/06\/18\/pandora-ui-approaching-perfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandora UI &#8211; Approaching Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The amazing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pandora.com\/\" title=\"Amazing Free Internet Radio\">Pandora<\/a> continues to refine and improve its <span class=\"definition\" title=\"User Interface\">UI<\/span>.  <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/googleads.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>One of the interesting things about web applications is that they can change from one visit to the next.  Depending on your point of view, this can be either incredibly frustrating or delightfully surprising.  If you need to rely on effective execution of an application for critical business reasons, then changing the application <span class=\"definition\" title=\"Yes, I just said 'willy-nilly'\">willy-nilly<\/span> is not a good idea.  What's key for <span class=\"definition\" title=\"Rich Internet Applications\">RIAs<\/span> is that changes to the UI should seem intuitive and not too jarring.<\/p>\n<p>When I first started using Pandora, I made a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.pandora.com\/pandora\/archives\/2005\/11\/pandora_version.html#c274\">couple suggestions for improvements<\/a> on the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.pandora.com\/\">Pandora  Blog<\/a>.  I'm happy to see that the album title is visible and that there is now a \"progress bar\" indicating how much of the song has been played.  Both changes were done in a way that do not change the way you interact with the main UI.<\/p>\n<p><a style=\"padding:10px; float:right;\" title=\"Pandora's New UI\" href=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/images\/pandora.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/images\/pandora-thumb.png\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>They've also added a new popup menu that slides up when you mouse over the song.  This allows you to rate the song with one-click (before this involved two clicks).  This is great, because I actually use this feature occasionally.  My only complaint is that I would have switched the order of Thumbs Down\/Up (I accidentally gave a thumbs down to a song I liked).  I'm sure I'll get used to it.<\/p>\n<p>I've made it clear <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/archives\/2005\/11\/11\/pandora-and-riding-the-crap-wave\/\">in the past<\/a> that I love Pandora.  To me, their UI just has that organic feel to it.  It seems to know what you want to do and is happy to let you do it.  Ok, I'll stop gushing now...<\/p>\n<p>The application uses <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openlaszlo.org\/\">OpenLaszlo<\/a>, which \"compiles\" to Adobe Flash at the moment.  I notice that when I right-click, it states that it uses Flash 8.  Does that mean that Linux users are not able to use Pandora?  Here's hoping that OpenLaszlo hurries up and implements its <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/archives\/2006\/04\/04\/openlaszlo-to-support-dhtml\/\">DHTML support<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As for Pandora's advertising model, displaying an ad off to the side is very considerate to its users, but it might not be very effective.  Often, I'll just let Pandora run in a browser tab and never visit it.  However, if I'm thinking about it, I'll occasionally go back to the tab to rate a song I like or dislike.  Even when I do this, if I'm using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opera.com\/\">Opera<\/a>, I can tear off the Pandora tab and size it to just the size of the main Pandora UI (meaning the ad is not even visible).  I wonder how effective Pandora is at selling music...  Anyway, I predict within a year that we'll have audio ads in Pandora as it rides the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/archives\/2005\/11\/11\/pandora-and-riding-the-crap-wave\/\">Crap Wave<\/a>.  I'll still probably visit though.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/googleads.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The amazing Pandora continues to refine and improve its UI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,39,41,43,25,11,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adobe","category-laszlo","category-opera","category-ria","category-software","category-technology","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}