Music Info for Windows 8 brings your collection to life

Microsoft accept just launched their Windows 8 operating organization and with it bundled in Xbox Music which gives users paid and costless ways to stream tunes and play local tracks as well. At nowadays though the app has a few shortcomings so it's through this lens we're going to review Music Info by Johnny Westlake.

Past the same developer who brought us Creative person Info for Windows Telephone, we have a look at this highly visual music playback and discovery app and even catch up with the programmer for a curt Q&A at the end.

Xbox Music for Windows 8 more often than not does an okay job of playing dorsum music in our collection and providing a Store front for buying more than content or grabbing more tracks as part of your subscription programme. There are problems with the app, however. On the Surface tablet it performs pretty badly, and then much and so in fact that it affects the overall performance of the whole organisation at times. There are some musical discovery features and ways to drill into your collection but they are currently express or experience half baked. Thankfully at that place is an alternative.

Artist Info on Windows Phone is an fantabulous app, bringing with it fantastic user interface blueprint and otherwise missing features to the platform. Like Creative person Info, Music Info brings some much needed features and performance to Windows 8. It has done so with a degree of visual flare and attention to detail that Microsoft themselves have been unable to capture in their home grown Xbox music app.

Get into the groove

The app is designed to work with local content, there are no streaming options so information technology needs to build a database of your tracks. It's simple enough, go to the collection settings option within the app and hitting the rebuild music database now button. The app will periodically browse you collection for new additions every few days. Once this is done you'll be presented with a beautiful rendition of your collection which you lot can view by Album, Artist or by Rails.

In Use

On the Surface tablet, the app moves along with a purpose, swiping through the albums or drilling into information about the creative person is silky smooth. If you're using it on a traditional PC and so information technology takes advantage of the extra screen existent estate to show you more of everything and functioning is even quicker generally. From the main drove screen you can click on an Album to kickoff playing or you tin can swipe up from the bottom or down from the top to reveal the play controls. Yous take the pick of Shuffle All tracks and the usual back and forward options. If you click on an album or Artist you'll be able to play everything by them or start drilling into that all important Music Info.

Music Discovery

As well as being able to play everything by an artist you'll be presented with options to read their biography, check out photos, run across their other albums and even check to see how comes up equally like to them. Beyond that you can encounter their acme tracks, albums, tour dates, shouts and tags that are associated with them.

Clicking on the discover section will give yous access to charts, search and nearby options. The nearby pick used your location and throws upward a map with a great list of upcoming events, assuasive yous to click on them and drill into who's playing so on.

Now Playing

When y'all boot off the music playback you'll be thrown into a highly visual series of playback screens, the commencement of which shows you lot what'south playing with time remaining, upcoming track in the playlist and options to become back into finding out more about your music. Sticking with just playback though if you tap the now playing screen you'll be pushed into a full screen view where it volition throw up the playback controls with a farther tap. Switching in and out of dissimilar views is fast and fluid and above all else visually pleasing in a style that will make y'all want to engage with the app rather than fight with information technology for control.

If I was being picky I'd take liked the playback controls to exist present on the main playback screen rather than having to swipe upwards or downwardly to reveal the controls. Clicking the volume rocker, swiping upwards or pressing on the screen will bring upward the controls and then maybe I'thou beingness picky. I'd also like to run across the playback screen get the wonderful typography based screen saver option of Artist Info on Windows Phone.

Sounding off

If y'all have a Surface tablet then you need to get this app right away, it will dramatically improve your music playback experience. Too as providing much needed performance the app also does a ameliorate job of showing your own drove and brings with it discovery tools for the curious. At that place are places that the app notwithstanding needs some work, I'd like to encounter some sharing options for Windows 8 charms and a few tweaks here and there. Fifty-fifty with a few gaps the app is still a must take add-on to your Windows viii automobile. You lot tin can attempt it for free and it only costs £0.99p U.k. or $1.49 The states should yous want to treat yourself to the total app.

Expect upwardly! By way of his toaster I defenseless up with Johnny and asked him a few questions about the app…

What made yous develop an App for Windows 8?

Back at University earlier this year I was studying a HCI (Man Figurer Interaction) module, and was doing some research into the usability of user interfaces. Windows 8 had just come out in it's consumer preview form and offered a radically different approach to user interaction, so it felt like a great place to start my research. During the research we tested a lot of designs and interaction models and ended up coming out with some hypothesis of how developers could try and better the usability of their Windows eight applications, whilst still sticking to some of the fundamental guidelines Microsoft suggested. There's a lot of merit to what Microsoft are trying to do, but there are some primal failings.

Fast forward to late July this year, and Microsoft UK were running a program to get students developers to come downwards to their campus in Reading, UK during Baronial to try and develop some applications for the Windows 8 launch, and and then I jumped at the adventure to try and put some of the ideas to exam, and merely by and large brand something actually squeamish! And then during Baronial, myself and my pattern partner Lydia worked away on it, and got the beginning version finished in fourth dimension to be up on the shop in August, thanks to some generous assist and tips from the people at Microsoft U.k..

Obviously a very similar concept to Artist Info on WP7 - were you able to reuse any code?

For these two applications - no, not really. Plainly Windows viii applications mostly take a unlike UI layout, so yous couldn't actually re-use any of that. So primal things like how media playing and getting the music library on both differs so much (Window Phone has lovely system provided API'southward to exercise it for you - Windows 8 does non). Pinning is different, live tiles are different, there's different UI controls to make use of, and so on.

And and then of course there's the new async programming mode introduced in .Internet 4.five / WinRT that makes asynchronous programming so much easier, so it gave me the opportunity just to start from scratch and create cleaner, more efficient code. I suppose it's worth noting I think I outset Artist Info ii years agone - and I've learnt a lot since and then - so the opportunity to rewrite it was a welcome 1. I've ended upward with a better internal architecture, cleaner lawmaking and libraries that I can hands move between projects.

I could accept reused some of the older lawmaking, but I think code re-use will be a lot easier between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, rather than WP7 and Win8. It's withal non shut to the point of "write i application, run it anywhere" - but the best thing is that the languages and the frameworks are largely the aforementioned. And then even if you have to write things differently for one platform than the other, the general ideas and techniques you lot've learnt tin still exist practical between platforms, which makes working on both extremely easy.

Are you nonetheless developing for Windows Phone vii/viii - tell the states what'due south going on

In regards to Windows Phone seven, I've pretty much finished at that place now. As information technology stands, my applications work great on it, and there's little point in investing more time into a platform that'll be dying out.

Going alee, I'll definitely be porting applications forrad to Windows Telephone 8 though, taking advantage of the new API's and the new features offered past the platform - like integrating spoken communication API'due south and custom lock screen backgrounds. I'thou planning to re-write Artist Info for WP8 rather than just updating the WP7 project, borrowing a lot of the backend code from newer Music Info base of operations at present rather than Artist Info (and information technology'll have on the name of Music Info like its bigger blood brother)

Will you exist bringing the same Zune way 'now playing' screens to Windows 8 app?

I'm planning on doing so at some point. It took quite a bit of fourth dimension to get it to piece of work on Windows Telephone, and it was one of the last major additions I added to the program (and never actually properly finished). Only, it was easier to get it working because there was only one screen resolution to piece of work with. Windows viii on the other manus has a whole heap of sizes to have into account - but on the other and there's generally far more processing power available and more opportunity for animated effects, so it'due south definitely something I'm looking into.

Nevertheless, information technology'll have to wait until after I've added in the rest of the other major features. I've got things like live tiles already finished, and others like lyrics, playlists, videos and a metadata editor on the cards. And so pipage dreams like adding in DRM protected music support and additional codecs, before I try my mitt at the at present playing screen.

What are your thoughts on developing WinRT apps, practice you lot examination on the ARM also?

I haven't had the opportunity to test on an ARM device myself (I don't have the coin for i), but if I did want to, Microsoft UK do offering developers the opportunity to come up to them and test their applications on a whole range of Windows 8 hardware, ARM tablets included.

But, I hear skilful things about its functioning on ARM devices! I never really intended Music Info to exist used as a music player - rather that functionality was initially very basic and gratuitous to the music discovery / data feature (I focus far more on music discovery in the market description rather than music playing). Simply it got to a bespeak where I institute out people were actually unhappy with how badly Xbox Music was performing on their tablets, and they were grateful that Music Info performed and then much better - even if it didn't accept all the features. So since and then, I've focused some more try in trying to beef upwards and improve the base of operations music playing functionality of the plan. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, just it should be good enough for nigh people I hope.

In general, developing WinRT apps I'm okay with. On the ane hand, I'm happy because I have and then much experience with WPF and Silverlight evolution, that jumping into WinRT development is extremely painless. On the other paw, I find the XAML side of information technology bulky, dull and underpowered compared to the XAML platforms beforehand. You tin can await at something like desktop OneNote vs WinRT OneNote - by desktop one has a notebook open, using about 25MB of RAM. The same notebook on the WinRT version - virtually 55MB. And the WinRT version has less features! Not to mention the desktop version pretty much opens instantly for me. Some people might put that downwards to it being early days for OneNote RT, but coming from a developer's bespeak of view... you realise that it's the limitation of the framework itself.

The same arguments were said about WPF at its release besides, and they however apply here. The XAML model is great for allowing you lot to create some fantastic looking UI's really hands, but information technology's just and then resource heavy - and I'd honey to see Microsoft just go nuts on trying to optimise it. Unfortunately with all the "rumours" yous hear from within Microsoft, information technology's outset to audio similar XAML is a second class denizen to HTML+CSS/JS powered UI'south so at that place might not be much chance of that happening, which is a real shame.

Tell us your thoughts on Windows Phone 8/ Windows viii and the iii screens thing...

Information technology'south a nice idea I suppose, and it's something Microsoft have been trying to accomplish for over a decade. They're in a amend identify than anyone to attain information technology, but it's not something that excites me greatly. I'm more than excited about creating experiences that get out the confines of screens and NUI's, rather than just being shared betwixt a bunch of them.

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