
Show HN: Minimalist Google Play Music Wrapper – Electron - pmsaue0
https://pmsaue0.github.io/play/
======
rajington
I think it's pretty cool, great job.

I just wanted to give a positive comment, specifically about the things that
people are giving negative comments about. The website design isn't boring,
and emphasizes that the app differentiator is that it's looking to be a better
design and have things like "album art first".

Electron does have a small resource problem, but that doesn't stop plenty of
people from downloading the desktop version of Slack, or other popular
electron wrappers. There's a reason a lot of people put up with Electron, it
fills a gap.

Whether you did this to try Electron or design, comments on HN can be very
subjective and not representative of actual reception. I personally never
thought album art was super important cause I grew up with Napster, but like
"cover flow" was REALLY well received. Artistic design is especially highly
opinionated.

~~~
pmsaue0
Thanks for your positive feedback! I appreciate it :)

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zzalpha
_It is essentially like running Google Play Music in your Chrome browser, but
as a native standalone app with some extra controls, nicer styles, and without
having to use Flash._

So why not just deliver this as a plugin for Chrome that reskins Play with
alternative stylesheets and so forth? At least then my OS can use COW to share
memory across Chrome processes instead of requiring a dedicated WebKit
instance just for Play.

~~~
pmsaue0
That sounds cool... I've not tried making a plugin before. Do you know of a
good reference / demo?

Another reason that I wanted a standalone app, is that I hate when I have to
flip through tabs or browser windows to find Google Play. I much prefer having
the app by itself.

Thanks!

~~~
zzalpha
Probably logical to start here!

[https://developer.chrome.com/getstarted](https://developer.chrome.com/getstarted)

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659087
Can minimalist and Electron be put in the same sentence with a straight face?

~~~
pmsaue0
haha, yea. "Minimal" in the layout of Google Play is what I meant. obvs the
most minimal engine for Google Play is just Chrome.

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tadfisher
Also see
[https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/](https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/)

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jwong_
Wouldn't call it minimalist -- hard a super hard time reading the following:

> the U N O F F I C I A L G O O G L E M U S I C P L A Y E R with M I N I M A L
> I S T S T Y L I N G S.

with all those icons and mixed fonts and the background image.

Is this just a skin for loop? I see that it's based on loop, and I can't seem
to find any differences in functionality.

~~~
pmsaue0
haha, yes the website is just a fun thing. Boilerplate websites get so boring
;)

Yes, it is in part a skin for loop. Some of the added functionality is to
replace the small album art with larger album art when in the album-view. But
really, I just wanted the keyboard shortcuts that I like, and I wanted the
look that I like. Pretty much, that's it.

