Opera doesn't support websockets. I'm sure some socket.IO fans will tell me that's not a big deal, but it kind of is. modern browsers support websockets.
and i know, this demo doesn't use it and will work fine in opera if you spoof the UA, but it's a lot easier to develop if you pick a feature set you're going to support, and skim out any browsers that don't support that feature set.
And what's with the condescending list? Excuse my vulgarity but the page managed to be insulting, clueless, and factually inaccurate all at the same time. Here's how it reads to me:
a) Fuck you.
b) Fuck you.
c) Yes I do, a big technology company where I can install whatever software I need working on harder technical problems than getting Myspace working cross-browser and I use Opera at home too so fuck you.
Totally agreed. What annoys me the most it that they are doing browser sniffing on the server side based on the user-agent, instead of feature detection on the client side. Talk about being updated.
The Web 2.0 craze is leading us back to the "Best viewed with" insanity of the 90's.
And is only going to get worse, with WebGL is not just "Sorry your browser is not supported, please download a different one.", but "Your video card drivers are not supported, buy new hardware and/or install a different Operating System"
The biggest hit to your esteem should be that there is space for a fourth browser icon there, they probably added Opera and then removed it when they realized it wasn't a modern browser after all.
You (or someone else reaping sweet karma) already posted this comment on reddit. As a computer scientist who uses the most modern browsers, I haven't had Opera installed SINCE 2007. As a web developer, opera has always been last to implement things, even when opera had been the one to propose new features. Opera just does not have the same support for HTML5 as the ones listed. If you're going to use a Hipster's browser, don't be surprised when you're forgotten about. Also, if you're so offended, complain to the MySpace marketing team.
I can so relate. The first startup I joined post Sun was a place called GolfWeb, which was a website dedicated to Golf enthusiasts and it was, in 1995, the top dedicated Golf site on the Internet. We had all sorts of Java plans, except only a few of the people coming to the site had Java, and RealAudio plans, but the same story. The great masses were all AOL customers it seemed and not all of them had a browser that could display tables correctly!
As publishing site you had to shoot for the lowest common denominator in order to reach the most customers. That is still a good strategy, sites that can shrug off features that aren't supported but still get the message across. Maybe MySpace will get that message.
Yes, the message could perhaps be targeted at Opera specifically, but what else do you want when your browser IS the minority on the web? If you've ever shipped software you know the time will come when you have to cut your list down. How do you make the justification for supporting Opera? And like notatoad says, it's not just a matter of adding some JS, you need to test, etc.
Opera excludes itself, by making its software difficult for developers to support. Most people have never even heard of Opera. So why should developers bother? Where's the value?
One point, you can tell this is a total work in progress/concept, and that the UI is also most likely staged at this point.
(I make this observation based on the fact that every post had "12 Connects", "3 Comments" and "2 Shares". Surely if you put this much effort into production of a video you would change these numbers?)
Anyway, features which I picked up from the video...
- Photo Sharing/Uploading
- Heavy Emphasis on Music
- Insights/Stats for presumably Bands
- Radio
- Some weird feature called "affinity" that matches your online identity to Justin Timberlake?
In the final shot, It also looked like Instagram filters were applied to every profile picture?
As expected, MySpace is clearly placing a heavy emphasis on a community driven around bands and music. But, I just fail to see how they are going to get a strong user base, just considering most/all bands are content and happy with Facebook and integration with the vast supply of Band Related apps...
The company I work for (Josephmark) was hired by MySpace to redesign the site and create something radically different. The interface you see was created by a few talented designers, the video you say was staged is definitely not staged. What you are seeing is what the new MySpace will look like when it's ready to launch. Yes, the site is focusing music - the new MySpace is going to be a social music platform because it has always and still is MySpace's biggest strength (they have access to more music and videos than anyone else), when you have more music than Spotify it would be crazy to try and target a different niche. it has been mentioned by MySpace themselves in interviews about the new site it's a music product. MySpace are not trying to compete with Facebook, if anything their new competitors are now Spotify, Last.fm and Rdio. The very fact you can login with your Facebook is proof of this enough.
The new MySpace is very much a music product. It has a fresh, crisp interface and it's smooth, sexy & fast. It's the fastest and best performing MySpace by far. What you see is the impressive work of the MySpace development team who have done an amazing job at taking ambitious designs and turning them into something captivating and interactive.
Don't judge the site people until you try it. From a developer perspective, I think most people here on HN will appreciate how technologically advanced and smooth the new MySpace is which has been built from the ground up when it's launched. As you can see it's more than a mere re-skinning of the old MySpace code base.
Am i wrong in saying that Myspace seemed to stay relevant for longer than it possibly should have purely because musicians and bands seemed to have an affection for it, for whatever reason? I know that even up until recently, when i've searched for local musicians, their Myspace page is still very high in search rankings, and i still often (somehow) find myself listening to local band's music via Myspace.
If they're going to put a focus in any area, for a redesign, it seems like music is the ticket.
As far as website designs go, this preview is stunning, even if it is just a mockup.
I don't know why, but for some reason I felt that, while reading your comment, you were for some reason biased towards wanting to find faults in MySpace's announcement.
Just because the UI is staged, it doesn't mean they won't be able to execute on it- matter of fact, with a team the size of myspace's, they'll likely do execute, and execute it well.
You mentioned that the video clearly used test data, but seemed to forget that when mentioning the affinity feature.
Maybe they sync people's instagram photos on their myspace profile.
Point being, give Myspace a fair change. They're certainly not the new kid on the block, are experienced, and this seems like a good new effort.
> (I make this observation based on the fact that every post had "12 Connects", "3 Comments" and "2 Shares". Surely if you put this much effort into production of a video you would change these numbers?)
I don't think it says that all. The last thing I do when designing a page is hook it up to a data source.
Nothing in this video looks that difficult to implement. Difficult to make cross-browser compatible, most likely.
"But, I just fail to see how they are going to get a strong user base"
Why not some integration with Pandora, where you can create user specific radio stations based off of the band's Myspace profile, that is also linked to their tour schedule etc etc?
Then all Pandora users who have a station created from that band can be notified either though a push notification or e-mail when they are playing a club within a 30 mi radius?
Integrating with the current Pandora userbase would fix the "how will they build a userbase?" and then Pandora would have another venue to access unsigned bands that they can promote through their Music Genome Project.
The use of horizontal scroll in the video is probably some way from fully refined too - there was no obvious chrome to facilitate the panning, which doesn't often work well outside of touch devices.
Our superpowers have detected you're using an outdated browser. That must mean:
a You don't use the Internet very often.
b You're at your parents' place on the PC they bought in 1996.
c You work for the government or a big corporation.
There's still hope. If you answered a or b, all you need to do is click on one of the beautiful icons below, follow the instructions and you'll be enjoying the new Myspace in a jiffy.
The preview looks great. I just don't understand why anyone would come back to something they've already moved on from to do things they're already doing elsewhere.
That said, I genuinely wish them the best of luck! :-)
It seems to me that this might strike a very relevant and "on trend" balance between the needs of the average person, hip circles, and creative circles. Furthermore, the redesign makes Facebook's recentish redesign look very clunky and amateurish; this design is very very fresh. I think it's a fairly interesting development.
There's a burgeoning disenfranchisement with Facebook IMO. People for whom Facebook is getting tired and old and for whom the interface is a drag may well be perfectly placed to jump [back].
This does look like they've refocussed back to the roots (?) of MySpace and gone tailored things towards bands/music again.
If this was billed as "FooBar: Justin Timberlake's new music social network" I would have signed up for an invite instantly. However, "sign up for an invite to MySpace" seems uncompelling. It'll be just as hard for them turn around the name MySpace as it would be for a night club that has become passe.
(Maybe it's just me... I also signed up for an invite to WireDoo.)
They've been working on this for awhile. I interviewed at Myspace about 3 years ago (mostly for the hell of it) and they were talking about the foundation for this interface. Their back end, from what I could tell, was a mess: C#, Ruby, Java, PHP, some ColdFusion still around...
These poor guys were working long hours. There were hundreds of employees, but they couldn't turn Myspace into something that 5 talented guys could make in 6 months. It was clear to me that there were a lot of politics lurking just beneath the surface.
I'm actually pretty impressed with this both in their direction and design. Focusing on the creative producers was what they should have done in the first place.
The Opera landing page is not just disappointing, it's downright offensive.
As someone who never used MySpace and is a fleeting Facebook user, I would've been interested in seeing the new product and willing to sign up and see if it's improved at all.
As it stands right now, not only am I not going to use it based on this stupidity, I'm going to make sure none of the people I could've brought over from Facebook don't either.
Way to alienate people before you even finish the new design. Bravo. JT must be so proud.
This looks like a great way to be a social network for bands/DJs/music and potentially monetise around the sale of music/festivals/marketing-music.
bands actively use Myspace still, that is a massive captive market. Not sure why this is getting such negative press here on HN since I'm sure Patio11 would agree that this is genius on their behalf.
The fact that the music industry is in turmoil could make for a great monetisation strategy for Myspace. Potentially with a much greater Profit than Facebook (ie Myspace may capture the music marketing/distribution problem which is still a multi-billion dollar industry). Think Google Adwords for music discovery.
I wouldnt be surprised if Justin Timberlake has an album coming out which can be downloaded through his Myspace when it comes online.
As a former MySpace employee I hope the redesign is worthwhile. As a former user I am not holding my breath. I certainly hope they threw out 100% of all the old code and started from scratch.
This site seems overly designed. It's so badly overly designed that my eyes hurt. That is why sites like facebook and twitter do well, they have predictable design that prevents a lot of rapid eye movements from top to the bottom of a screen to take in content.
Wow! If these guys manage to rebrand and capture the entertainment segment, that will be huge. They need to focus on being fun and forget everything facebook or LinkedIn and this will allow them to innovate. Also they should hit the under 24yr old market hard as this is where a lot of market share lies for new innovative products and they will have less bias against the MySpace brand name. If they succeed students will be covering it as a case study in business schools.
The site is really sexy, i like it. However I don't think it matters. Social media is built on fads. Myspace had its day, there once was a time when it was the "cool thing". I wouldn't be surprised if a few more users come back. However i'd be really surprised if it was any significant amount. The site, just like Digg, is a zombie. It is the living dead. You just can't make zombies into productive members of society again.
[+] [-] lordlarm|13 years ago|reply
Ironically Opera was the one who proposed the <video>-tag which this site uses for it's rotating LP, in 2007. [1] Way to exclude users.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#History_of_.3Cvideo...
[+] [-] notatoad|13 years ago|reply
and i know, this demo doesn't use it and will work fine in opera if you spoof the UA, but it's a lot easier to develop if you pick a feature set you're going to support, and skim out any browsers that don't support that feature set.
[+] [-] reddiric|13 years ago|reply
http://i.imgur.com/DO5Kb.png
And what's with the condescending list? Excuse my vulgarity but the page managed to be insulting, clueless, and factually inaccurate all at the same time. Here's how it reads to me:
a) Fuck you.
b) Fuck you.
c) Yes I do, a big technology company where I can install whatever software I need working on harder technical problems than getting Myspace working cross-browser and I use Opera at home too so fuck you.
[+] [-] epidemian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luriel|13 years ago|reply
And is only going to get worse, with WebGL is not just "Sorry your browser is not supported, please download a different one.", but "Your video card drivers are not supported, buy new hardware and/or install a different Operating System"
[+] [-] mparlane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artursapek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robinduckett|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matmann2001|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
As publishing site you had to shoot for the lowest common denominator in order to reach the most customers. That is still a good strategy, sites that can shrug off features that aren't supported but still get the message across. Maybe MySpace will get that message.
[+] [-] exterm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|13 years ago|reply
From: http://www.opera.com/press/faq/
"How many people are using Opera? Today, more than 275 million people are using Opera every month."
[+] [-] shortlived|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbyvalles|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mibbitier|13 years ago|reply
Their market share has been under 1% for years, so it's really not worth any website worrying about.
[+] [-] anotherblue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunkencity|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protolif|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rdevnull|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisacky|13 years ago|reply
One point, you can tell this is a total work in progress/concept, and that the UI is also most likely staged at this point.
(I make this observation based on the fact that every post had "12 Connects", "3 Comments" and "2 Shares". Surely if you put this much effort into production of a video you would change these numbers?)
Anyway, features which I picked up from the video...
- Photo Sharing/Uploading
- Heavy Emphasis on Music
- Insights/Stats for presumably Bands
- Radio
- Some weird feature called "affinity" that matches your online identity to Justin Timberlake?
In the final shot, It also looked like Instagram filters were applied to every profile picture?
As expected, MySpace is clearly placing a heavy emphasis on a community driven around bands and music. But, I just fail to see how they are going to get a strong user base, just considering most/all bands are content and happy with Facebook and integration with the vast supply of Band Related apps...
[1] https://new.myspace.com/play
[+] [-] DigitalSea|13 years ago|reply
The new MySpace is very much a music product. It has a fresh, crisp interface and it's smooth, sexy & fast. It's the fastest and best performing MySpace by far. What you see is the impressive work of the MySpace development team who have done an amazing job at taking ambitious designs and turning them into something captivating and interactive.
Don't judge the site people until you try it. From a developer perspective, I think most people here on HN will appreciate how technologically advanced and smooth the new MySpace is which has been built from the ground up when it's launched. As you can see it's more than a mere re-skinning of the old MySpace code base.
[+] [-] anjc|13 years ago|reply
If they're going to put a focus in any area, for a redesign, it seems like music is the ticket.
As far as website designs go, this preview is stunning, even if it is just a mockup.
[+] [-] felipellrocha|13 years ago|reply
Just because the UI is staged, it doesn't mean they won't be able to execute on it- matter of fact, with a team the size of myspace's, they'll likely do execute, and execute it well.
You mentioned that the video clearly used test data, but seemed to forget that when mentioning the affinity feature.
Maybe they sync people's instagram photos on their myspace profile.
Point being, give Myspace a fair change. They're certainly not the new kid on the block, are experienced, and this seems like a good new effort.
[+] [-] crisnoble|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|13 years ago|reply
I don't think it says that all. The last thing I do when designing a page is hook it up to a data source.
Nothing in this video looks that difficult to implement. Difficult to make cross-browser compatible, most likely.
[+] [-] rationalbeats|13 years ago|reply
Why not some integration with Pandora, where you can create user specific radio stations based off of the band's Myspace profile, that is also linked to their tour schedule etc etc?
Then all Pandora users who have a station created from that band can be notified either though a push notification or e-mail when they are playing a club within a 30 mi radius?
Integrating with the current Pandora userbase would fix the "how will they build a userbase?" and then Pandora would have another venue to access unsigned bands that they can promote through their Music Genome Project.
Just a thought off the top of my head.
[+] [-] estel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s_henry_paulson|13 years ago|reply
I don't know whether to call this a gross generalization or plain wrong, but it's both.
[+] [-] robinduckett|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aw3c2|13 years ago|reply
Not so fast!
Our superpowers have detected you're using an outdated browser. That must mean:
a You don't use the Internet very often.
b You're at your parents' place on the PC they bought in 1996.
c You work for the government or a big corporation.
There's still hope. If you answered a or b, all you need to do is click on one of the beautiful icons below, follow the instructions and you'll be enjoying the new Myspace in a jiffy.
[+] [-] iamben|13 years ago|reply
That said, I genuinely wish them the best of luck! :-)
[+] [-] anjc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|13 years ago|reply
This does look like they've refocussed back to the roots (?) of MySpace and gone tailored things towards bands/music again.
[+] [-] nostromo|13 years ago|reply
(Maybe it's just me... I also signed up for an invite to WireDoo.)
[+] [-] mratzloff|13 years ago|reply
These poor guys were working long hours. There were hundreds of employees, but they couldn't turn Myspace into something that 5 talented guys could make in 6 months. It was clear to me that there were a lot of politics lurking just beneath the surface.
[+] [-] espadagroup|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ary|13 years ago|reply
That said, it's a nice concept.
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|13 years ago|reply
As someone who never used MySpace and is a fleeting Facebook user, I would've been interested in seeing the new product and willing to sign up and see if it's improved at all.
As it stands right now, not only am I not going to use it based on this stupidity, I'm going to make sure none of the people I could've brought over from Facebook don't either.
Way to alienate people before you even finish the new design. Bravo. JT must be so proud.
[+] [-] djt|13 years ago|reply
bands actively use Myspace still, that is a massive captive market. Not sure why this is getting such negative press here on HN since I'm sure Patio11 would agree that this is genius on their behalf.
The fact that the music industry is in turmoil could make for a great monetisation strategy for Myspace. Potentially with a much greater Profit than Facebook (ie Myspace may capture the music marketing/distribution problem which is still a multi-billion dollar industry). Think Google Adwords for music discovery.
I wouldnt be surprised if Justin Timberlake has an album coming out which can be downloaded through his Myspace when it comes online.
[+] [-] jrajav|13 years ago|reply
Second thought: ... Okay, I might be a little bit excited to see how this plays out.
(Particularly like the searching ideas.)
[+] [-] matmann2001|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuruShastry|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binarysolo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iblaine|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electic|13 years ago|reply
I'll pass.
[+] [-] nashequilibrium|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xpressyoo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swalsh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canistr|13 years ago|reply