Gotta scroll, baby, gotta scroll...

July 19, 2008 8:48 PM

This is just a small point, but about those little yellow slider bars on the right side of the music players on the Music top page and the Music Challenges page and individual user's pages...

...isn't it a little counterintuitive that you don't grab the yellow part of the bar and drag it in order to scroll through the song selections? I mean, in the same way you grab the aqua blue slider on the side of your browser in Mac, or the fader that you grab and slide, in the music players on MySpace Music pages, etc.

I know it's not the biggest issue facing humankind at this historic juncture, but, goshdarnit, it just seems like you oughtta be able to grab that yellow fader and move it down. And/or have some little up/down arrows on that sidebar that you can click and hold on, having the playlist scroll smoothly.

Now, admittedly, I say this as someone who took an inordinately long time to figure out that you grab the empty part and click your mouse in order to move up or down the list. But I find this method inefficient: you can't really scroll, you jump by about 4 songs: they bob up or down and it's easy to lose your place.

Any chance of getting some scrolling action going on these players?

*imagines Tina Turner singing "scrolling, scrolling, scrolling on the river...*

posted by flapjax at midnite to Bugs at 8:48 PM (15 comments total)

I seem to recall that the player is some sort of stock thing we're using, but I'm not sure. If that's the case, then no. cortex is back from vacation tomorrow, maybe him or pb can shed some light on this.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:37 PM on July 19, 2008

Yes, we're using the stock JW FLV Media Player and we don't have any control over the interface beyond colors. You could mention your suggestion to the player developers in their Support forum, but I haven't had much luck getting a response to issues there in the past.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:48 PM on July 19, 2008

Aha. Oh well. Thanks for your answers, jess and pb.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:47 AM on July 20, 2008

FWIW, I've always found the behavior of that slider irritating as well.
posted by !Jim at 3:50 AM on July 20, 2008

I tried to open the .fla but you need CS3; I'm still back in the dark ages with MX 2004. I'm pretty sure the slider is a component and thus not tweakable from outside the .fla. You would need to get rid of that component and swap it with either another one (like the one flapjax at midnite suggested) or, write your own custom component. Some actionscript would need to be changed to reference the new component. But don't quote me on this.
posted by sluglicker at 9:01 AM on July 20, 2008

I looked at the .as files and didn't see any reference to the scrollbar, so yeah, it's most likely a component. It would have it's own .as file. This should be a relatively easy thing to do. I'd be happy to work on it if someone wanted to donate CS3 to me;) but if not, there should be someone here who can do it.
posted by sluglicker at 9:24 AM on July 20, 2008

Sluglicker, where did you find the .fla and .as files?
posted by thinman at 1:26 PM on July 20, 2008

thinman: I don't know where sluglicker got them from, but here's where to get all the source files.
posted by philomathoholic at 1:52 PM on July 20, 2008

Here's a "clear overview of the application structure"[PDF], from pb's link.
posted by philomathoholic at 2:01 PM on July 20, 2008

I got them through the link philomathoholic provided. Specifically, here. I found this playlist scrollbar that works the way flapjax at midnite (and probably everybody else) wants.
posted by sluglicker at 2:55 PM on July 20, 2008

Supported skinning elements.
Tutorial

Not much time left (ends on July 31), but you could earn $500 for your new skin.
posted by sluglicker at 3:03 PM on July 20, 2008

Hey, what they said.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:42 PM on July 20, 2008

Hey, pb and others, did you see that playlist scrollbar link from sluglicker, just upthread? That's what we need!

Can we have one like that? Please please please?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:58 PM on July 21, 2008

flapjax, I have no idea how they got the scrollbar to work for that example. There's no info about the scrollbar there, just info about displaying extra info from a playlist below the player. I know the scrollbar works there, but how it's working is a mystery to me. They might have a customized version of the Flash player that includes a different scrollbar control in the code.

I'm not a Flash developer, so that kind of monkeying with the player source code is out of my area.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:18 PM on July 21, 2008

Hmm, I see. Damn.

Oh well, slamming James Brown clip anyway, huh?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:00 AM on July 22, 2008