September 9 site update

rshide said:
Last.fm has a lot of gall to tell users to switch browsers because of problems THEY have. I've been a SW engineer for 30 yrs and the condition of this update is atrocious, makes me wonder about the level of competence of the development team..Apart from the already mentioned fact that they didn't tell them to switch, I'd beg for them to force users to switch away from that godawful IE5/IE6. There is a reason Microsoft made an 'important update' out of IE7 (and 8). Call me an idiot, but I think backward compatibility is 'overrated', so to say. It's not like the transition is utterly gigantic. But the gain in security (and the reduction in development time, I'd argue) would be quite big. But in principle, you're right that the engineer shouldn't tell the user how to work, of course.

HodgeStar said:
acreature said:
HodgeStar said:
flaneur said:
We've also extended tag.getTopArtists to take multiple tags. How can i do this?Add your tags using square brackets, for instance: ?tag[]=rock&tag[]=90s&tag[]=female+vocalistsAh, i see, it gives two seperate lists. i won't ask why the square brackets though i immediately tried to plug boolean operators into them: ?tag[+]=ska&tag[-]=punk...I kinda laughed when you said you inserted those boolean operators in them (and I have no clue why you would do that, if you knew what arrays are). The brackets imply the use of an array. There are some differences between languages as to how they work, but basically you can see it as a box where you insert things in. Each 'spot' in the box is identified by one value (in traditional programming languages, a number between 0 and n-1, where n is the size of the array). Anyway, usually the value between the brackets is used to identify one spot in the box. I hope this makes some sense. And if you were well aware of what arrays were, I'm really wondering what I'm missing.

namnatulco said:
Apart from the already mentioned fact that they didn't tell them to switch, I'd beg for them to force users to switch away from that godawful IE5/IE6. There is a reason Microsoft made an 'important update' out of IE7 (and 8). Call me an idiot, but I think backward compatibility is 'overrated', so to say. It's not like the transition is utterly gigantic. But the gain in security (and the reduction in development time, I'd argue) would be quite big.
Yeah. There's also the fact that IE6 doesn't support PNG transparency, which basically binds web developers who bend over backward accommodating it to graphic parameters from 1987. While browsers don't often become completely obsolete for some time, making strong backward compatibility a worthwhile practice, IE6 was released in a necrotic state to begin with. As far as I am concerned, last.fm would be doing the internet a public service by steering users away from software zombies like that one.


The header has been greatly improved. Nice.

HodgeStar said:
~chop~
yes, but if it denotes an array i would expect a single parameter that takes a list e.g ?tag[]=disco,funk,... I was thinking about the playground multi tag search where we can search for ska +punk or ska -punk.

Good one! I'd guess it should become something along the lines of ?tag[]=ska&tag[-][]=punk or just plain ?tag[]=ska&tag[]=-punk, though. I mean, this kind of variable passing has no support for arrays, I think (disclaimer: I played with this for half an hour or so a year ago, I might be totally wrong).

Hooray, the header doesn't look like it was designed by a ten-year-old farting around with MSPaint.

BTW, was the footer nuked in this release? It isn't loading for me anymore. (Not that I miss the pointless links to other CBS sites)

We've almost got the pre-beta look back. Now if only we got the old functionality back too...

gwalla said:
BTW, was the footer nuked in this release? It isn't loading for me anymore. (Not that I miss the pointless links to other CBS sites)
Works fine here. Try forcing a refresh or do a cache sweep, I guess.

gwalla said:

BTW, was the footer nuked in this release? It isn't loading for me anymore. (Not that I miss the pointless links to other CBS sites)

We've almost got the pre-beta look back. Now if only we got the old functionality back too...The footer's still there. I'm on latest FF, WinXP.

aww, not quite the old beta (which I still miss) and I'm not giving up on no-space where we need it, but yes, definitely, we're getting there. Now I can F5 like an idiot to see if I'm 'recently active' just like the old days. lol (I never, ever, saw myself on that old page before, try as I might!)

.... oooh! I'm there! I'm Recently Active! But I had to 'see more' to see me. :D

I used to use the Track search to help determine which artist was correct for a tag, especially in the case of multiple artist tracks. I would search its name and look for the track with the greatest number of listeners to help decide.

Now, there's no listeners display on the Track search page. Would it be possible to add this as a column? It's a major, major drawback for me, as I used that trick all the time.

Thanks!

I am annoyed that the new track or artist search just gives three pages of the most popular artists. I like the underground, and the obscure. I used to like having 200 pages of songs to sort through in order to find an obscure death metal track thats only had three plays before. I have no desire to hear the mainstream. and what about the poor struggling act seeking to get their stuff heard. What chance do they have now. At least give us the option to use the old style search if we want to. I for one will be spending far less time listening here now that my underground music pleasure has been dumped on from above

HodgeStar said:
apropos 'see more'. i get the "Last.fm | Temporarily Offline" page every time i click 'see more...' on the new search result page. am i the only one?
Same here.

It's nice. Well done ;)

Though wouldn't more colour choices be great? And I am aware of the CSS scripts.

Yeah, we're all over grunge now :)

I like it guys, brings the forums a little bit forward as well.

never tried this before - I typed the artist name, then started typing the track name and got exactly the result I was looking for. Don't know if we had it before, but anyway - thanks!