

My webapp: Guitar tabs as they should be - kilian
http://guitaryst.com/

======
mayank
This is great, but as another comment below notes, beware the legal troubles
that are headed your way. A number of wonderful guitar tab sites (starting
with OLGA back in the day) have been taken down.

In fact, it seems that OLGA is still down: <http://www.olga.net/> And they
just put up tabs.

~~~
kilian
Yes, I know :( This kept me from doing anything in this direction for a long,
long time, but in the end I just wanted to _build something cool_. I don't
host any of the tabs so that might make a difference. However if people want
to take me offline, I'm just going offline.

~~~
getsat
Your domain is already on a non-US registrar, so all you need to do is move
from EC2 to a non-US host like abdicar.com, PRQ, admin.2x4.ru, or any "bullet-
proof" host. They will ignore DMCA requests and their ilk.

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bjonathan
Your website doesnt seem to work under Firefox 3.6.12 (windows 7 64bits) . I
can see the page 1second and after I am redirect to a blank page and the page
is stuck loading.

Strangely the site works smoothly with Chrome..

~~~
kilian
I'm sorry! This is a bug I just can't seem to fix (and it's not consistent
either) or find out why it's happening.

~~~
JangoSteve
If it behaves differently in FireFox and Chrome and it's inconsistent, it's
usually an issue with the speed of JavaScript execution and the order of the
JavaScript operations.

If it works in FireFox but not Chrome, it usually indicates a problem with the
JavaScript executing too quickly. E.g. computing the width of one element and
setting it based on the width of another element on the page, before the
content of that other element has been fully rendered.

If it works in Chrome but not FireFox, it usually indicates a problem with the
JavaScript executing too slowly. E.g. firing off an intensive process, like
manipulating 100 elements on the page at once, and then firing off another
action that depends on the previous process being completed. If the JavaScript
execution is slow, it's possible to fire off the next event while the other is
still being processed.

In this case you'll want to either have the previous function fire off an
event when it's completed, and bind the next function to that event, or brute
force it with a setTimeout.

Wow, that was way longer than I meant it to be. Oh well, hope it helps.

~~~
kilian
FYI, I managed to track this down to the twitter 'hovercards' causing a fit
onload. Got rid of them and the problem went away.

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jkincaid
Very cool as a V1, with a user experience that's loads better than existing
alternatives. Couple feature suggestions (that are probably already on your
roadmap):

-User and/or editor reviews are a must. Tab quality tends to range from completely wrong to _almost_ right, and without any kind of community input it can be difficult for newbies to tell the difference.

-I don't know how feasible it is, but a web based version of PowerTab (or comparable solutions) would be great. Old-school tabs are nice, but when you can listen to a MIDI-fied version of a portion of a tab, it helps a lot.

~~~
kilian
I have plans for getting much better tabs, but I'm not there yet.

Regarding number two, check out <http://www.songsterr.com>, I don't think I'm
ready to compete with them yet :)

------
kilian
I wrote this much in the same vein as <http://lystener.com>, as just an
easier, better and prettier way than other guitar tab sites. Let me know what
you think! :)

Edit: For people wanting more info, I wrote a blog post too:
[http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/guitar-tabs-as-
they-...](http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/guitar-tabs-as-they-should-
be-guitaryst-com/) It has invites to the hosting platform I use:
<http://djangy.com>, a very cool "Heroku for Django"

~~~
tenaciousJk
Definitely don't want an invite for this host. The site has been unreachable
since the link made it to the font page of HN.

~~~
kilian
I don't think so: <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/guitaryst.com> There's
about 90 people online right now :)

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cosgroveb
I find the tablature somewhat difficult to read. The color of the text doesn't
contrast too well against the background. You might also try to find a
typeface but I assume you need something monospaced for this app.

Otherwise this looks really awesome!

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cypherpunks01
This is really nice, I was thinking of working on something similar for a web-
based music player I'm building. Just curious, is your tab data from one
source, or a variety of sources? Or is that confidential? :)

Keep up the good work

~~~
kilian
Feel free to email me! My email is at the bottom of the site or in my profile
here :)

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iterationx
You need a demo button so I can see how it works without creating an account.

~~~
mishmash
Or search for a song.

~~~
kilian
Hover over "last.fm". Next to Last.fm I support Like.fm and Libre.fm, _and_
regular tab search :)

~~~
Vindexus
Consider putting a down arrow next to "last.fm" to show that it's a dropdown
option. I had no idea until I read this comment.

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necolas
At first I didn't notice that you could search for songs. It didn't work for
me in Chrome or Opera (didn't bother trying other browsers after that); no
music was playing at all. Nice idea though.

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slouch
i couldn't get this to work. i put "test" in for the last.fm name like was
suggested here. a song and tab appeared, and nothing else. am i missing audio
or something?

when i browse tab sites, i know which ones have the quality tabs. i choose
ultimate-guitar and bassmasta as frequently as possible because i know i hate
911tabs, etc. i'm not going to switch to anyone's new web app unless i know
they have the best tabs from these other sources.

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econodog
This is awesome. Hope you can get around the legal stuff. I wish I still had a
guitar because I'd definitely be all over this.

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tofumatt
This is really cool. Hope you can deal with the legal issues, because I would
use this for sure.

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PonyGumbo
FYI - The page has been stuck loading for me for several minutes.

~~~
kilian
The Twitter button is being mega slow, just press stop and the page should
load :) I'll look into getting loading those after the rest of the page is
done!

~~~
Pewpewarrows
You should just look into using AddThis, which allows you to load their script
async and it'll load itself once the DOM is ready:

[https://www.addthis.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12202](https://www.addthis.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12202)

~~~
binarysoul
you can do the twitter button async as well
[http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/08/13/the-twitter-
but...](http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/08/13/the-twitter-button-is-it-
making-your-site-join-the-fail-whale-shuffle/)

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Nice find, but I find it kind of ironic that the page took about 10 seconds to
finish loading from the other non-async scripts the author has on that page :)

