Muxtape With Coverflow Using Fluid
I am making this post for three reasons:
- I have bee meaning to make a post about fluid for quite some time now
- I wanted to write something about the increasingly cool muxtape.com
- I needed an excuse to play with ScreenFlow
Naturally I have combined these three “to-dos” into one. Below is a quick tutorial on harnessing the power of Fluid’s new thumbnail plugin to create a simple Muxtape application with sweet coverflow previews of the featured mixes. Video after the jump.
I am also making some changes around here over the next little while so if things look a little bunk don’t worry about it, soon they will be better. This wordpress template was only meant to be temporary and soon I will launch the new layout with some new features and more regular updates.
update: If you having problems finding the thumbnail plugin or unable to edit URL patterns make sure you update your muxtape SSB to the newest version of fluid (0.8.9.1 at the time of posting this). If you downloaded the already assembled app from Tom Martin’s blog you will need to update it in the preferences.
Also make sure Leopard is up to date as some folk are experiencing difficulties on older releases. Thanks Marshall
update 2: I have gotten a couple comments and emails about the URL pattern and CSS selector. Here they are ready for copy and paste or just reference so you don’t have to scrub back through the video.
URL Pattern: http://*muxtape.com/*
CSS Link or Image Selector: ul.featured a
You can find out more about specifying thumbnail content here
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Comments
Thanks a ton Colin! couldn’t have made a better screencast myself. Great, great stuff!!!
also, i never thought of using the plugin with muxtape, but now that i’ve seen your ‘cast i realize its such a great fit.
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Goddamnit, I can’t get the previews to show up! Looks awesome though. Really want to figure it out and write about it.
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[...] video demo of setting up a Fluid app. I made one for Theprogressbar in 15 seconds. I always check where a video is hosted from. The [...]
Thanks for your posting this, I am really impressed by this combination of muxtape and fluid.
However, I had problems with setting up the “thumbnail” functions, nothing shows up after I input the URL pattern and CSS link.
Is it because I am using the latest version of Fluid app?
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admin reply on April 17, 2008 10:40 pm:
Not sure why it isn’t working for you. You must have the latest version to even be able to edit the URL pattern so it sounds like you have the correct version.
I tried this on a few systems and I did have issues getting it working on my Girlfriends mac however I did not get long enough to figure out what went wrong. I will let you know if I can figure out what went wrong.
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Ivan reply on April 17, 2008 11:19 pm:
Hey, it works now, I found out its because I don’t have the latest version of Leopard. Thanks for helping anyway!!!
Its such a cool app!!! tHx
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I had to do a software update on Leopard before it worked for me. Now it does and I’m loving it.
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Muxtape With Coverflow Using Fluid | nerdd.net…
\r\nMuxtape: social webapp for sharing music playlists. Fluid: Mac desktop app for creating site-spe…
[...] part because the simple interface is such a joy to use. Now, internet and organic root-beer lover Colin Sproule has come up with a great way for Mac users to get an iTunes-style Coverflow preview of playlists on [...]
[...] This is so cool - the one problem with Muxtape was the clicking back and forth to find stuff - this solves the problem in a beautiful way… [...]
I just downloaded the latest version of AirFoil and now I’ve got this app running through my speakers! sweet.
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Hi,
not sure if you up to the task but someone really needs to make an app like this for the iphone/ipod touch. right now muxtape doesn’t really work on iphones (it won’t play a whole playlist - each song has to be selected manually). If I knew how, I would do it.
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Hi - what a great little tutorial! I am also, however, unable to get it working - latest Fluid, latest Leopard. The thumbnail pane works with other sites, and it opens with muxtape but shows nothing… I have triple checked to make sure I typed the url & css values correctly (that is a space after ‘featured’, right?)… I wonder is it possible it’s a non-Intel Mac issue (I’m on a powerbook)? Can’t think why but ya never know! Or is it Safari 3.1.1 update that’s the issue? Anyway, many thanks!
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UPDATE: the problem (on my powerbook G4 at least) seems to be the split panel view - the floating hud panel version of this works fine but the panel view shows nothing… Odd.
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admin reply on April 19, 2008 10:27 am:
Strange indeed. You might want to drop Todd a line over in the Fluid google group: http://groups.google.com/group/fluidapp
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Great use of some great apps. Where can I get that awesome walle wallpaper!?
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admin reply on April 19, 2008 11:18 am:
I cropped that wall-e wallpaper down from these ridiculously high resolution stills on /film
http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/04/12/cool-stuff-super-high-resolution-wall-e-photos/
Let me know if you want me to just post up a copy of the walllpaper instead.
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ANy way of getting the muxtape/extension to remember where you put the horizontal divider bar which splits between the cover flow at the bottom and the normal site at the top?
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admin reply on April 20, 2008 12:32 pm:
Not that I know of. Head over to the Fluid Google group to request it as a feature http://groups.google.com/group/fluidapp
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I made a video about Fluid and Socialthing! if you want to check it out. http://www.vimeo.com/805366
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[...] why not setup your browser to act like Cover Flow to pre-browse everyone’s mix? Check this tutorial here on how to utilize this time saving feature. [...]
Thank you very much a wonderful surprise finding fluid, muxtape and how to mod it all on the same page. Excellent work! Thanks
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I dont get it … I thought it was going to pull album cover art for each and much more. THough it gives me some ideas!
Well nice job you landed on Digg’s front page in turn promoting MuxTape, creation.net and FluidApp and this site too! I am now familiar with all these apps. Was familiar with MuxTape before. Social Media bended FTW!
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[...] ← Marilyn Minter - Food Porn Commercials Muxtape With Coverflow Using Fluid April 20th, 2008 / 0 Comments / [...]
[...] say much about it, but I do know that Fluid brings quite a lot to the table. See this screencast of Muxtape with CoverFlow using Fluid for example. Despite my preference with doing everything web-based, I would still use something [...]
Cool tutorial! I was wondering what application you used to create your video? I like the screen zoom and spotlight effects!
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admin reply on April 20, 2008 12:33 pm:
Screenflow: http://www.varasoftware.com/products/screenflow/
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What a great idea — finally, a way to find great featured playlists easily on Muxtape! I am having one issue, however; if I want to see more playlists by refreshing the page, the thumbnails do not automatically update. I have to exit the Muxtape app and open it again to get new thumbs. Any ideas?
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Still hoping you’ll share your Quicksilver theme/appearance with us!
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admin reply on April 20, 2008 2:56 pm:
I can’t find the exact HUD theme I use for quicksilver but this one is very popular:
http://www.mygnu.com/julius/proj_bezel.html
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[...] user Colin Sproule posts a totally badass screencast (using my favorite screencasting app, ScreenFlow) showing how to setup the Fluid Thumbnail Plug-in [...]
This rocks! Think I’ve found something to fill the void that the Twitter outage has created. Thanks for sharing with such clear directions.
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[...] better, combine it with Fluid and the Coverflow plugin on OS X, as described in this screencast, and you’ve got a stellar way to browse and discover new Muxtapes. It’ll be even better [...]
[...] course finding out how you could use the cool thumbnail-as-coverflow feature with Fluidapp.com and muxtape, was awesome! And brought me to making this (ok, somewhat poor) fluidapp icon for muxtape. I [...]
[...] this short video tutorial you’ll see how to manage muxtapes in coverflow style using an app called [...]
[...] a few days ago people went ga-ga over this video of some dude showing muxtape mixes using the Coverflow visualization to browse through them. OK, so [...]
thanks for this tutorial. now i’m hooked on muxtape and fluid.
I did some searching and found a great muxtape search site, then added the coverflow fluid combo.
here you go:
Advanced Preferences: *muxseek.ah-huh.net/*
URL Pattern: http://muxseek.ah-huh.net/*
CSS Link or Image Selector: ul li a
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[...] Percent of Bandwidth But P2P No Longer to Blame The Pirate Bay Smashes 12,000,000 BitTorrent Users Muxtape With Coverflow Using Fluid Making Money, the How-To Way Experiential Typography | One Day Poem [...]
[...] I’ve turned a deaf ear to iTunes in favour of discovering new music on Muxtape. In a recent post I demonstrated the benefits of wrangling Muxtape into a site specific browser using Fluid. While [...]
[...] Almost forget to mention how to use muxtape with coverflow. Pretty cool looking, but would have to do it on my wife’s computer since it seems to require [...]
Great tip, works perfectly, if onlymuxtape auto played the playlists, I’d never have to actually see the website, and could go full scren with the coverflow mode, that would be sweet.
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Here’s the link to the flickr icon if anyone was searching for it (I know I was)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kridgway/2433201214/sizes/o/in/pool-636943@N22/
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Hey Cawlin - I loved this screencast! I just got my first Mac two days ago (I’ve been a PC guy for the last 14 years) and this was an awesome little tweak! Thanks so much for putting this together!
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[...] Muxtape the cover flow treatment. Very [...]