[ANNOUNCE] It's all about knowing your music! SqueezePad 1.9.0 hits the App Store

[bluegaspode]

Nice idea, but the rendering of the web-pages results in a microscopic font and zooming\scrolling is a right pain!

I tried various options before. The problem is that I found all other possible options more cumbersome.

For instance I tried to fake the browser to behave like an iPhone.
Though there are bigger fonts then, most web-pages had hardcoded sizes, so didn't use the full width.
Or on Last.FM the site was mostly rendered as text only and didn't show album covers on the title page.

Same problem with telling the truth 'I am an iPad browser'. Then most sites used iPad size, which is to big for the current browser window size. So one had to scroll a lot from left to right.
You can still see this on the YouTube page which is bigger than the width. Here I had to keep the iPad signature to prevent YouTube using Flash which would not have worked on iPad.
This would have happened to most other sites as well.

So in the end I decided to start with a small zoom factor, so one at least could see the full size page first and the instantly zoom to the section one is interested in.

If it's still too small you can open the page in Safari with one more tap. Remember that you can return to SqueezePad quite fast by doing a double tap on the home button to see the multitasking bar.

By the way: I just realized that on iOS5 my 'hack' to hide the iPad signature in the browser does not work anymore. So for a short time (until I provide SqueezePad 1.9.2) you can see how it might have been with pages rendering a little bit bigger.
Do use the chance to tell me your opinion then!

(Before upgrading to iOS5 on Wednesday, be aware of the possible other issue though: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...488#post662488)

[bluegaspode]

Would a link to bandcamp be a good idea ?

How big is the chance there to find information about most of the music you own?
Did some test searches and it didn't provide good results with my library.

Don't you think that for the more unknown bands the normal Google search would suffice?

[bluegaspode]

version 1.9.2 of SqueezePad was released to the AppStore some minutes ago.
It's a minor release with the following enhancements:

• the browser feature now uses google.com rather than google.de on artist searches for all non-german users
• support for CustomBrowse menus with three lines
• on the settings page of SqueezePad you now have a button to open the settings page of your Squeezebox-Server in Safari

[guidof]

I was skeptical of the Web searching function, but found that I often use it, mostly with Wikipedia as the default service.

Very cool indeed.

Yes, the font is extremely small. As you say, it may be difficult to find a workaround for this problem, but I hope that one can be implemented in time.

I know, one could keep a magnifying glass handy, but that would be an inelegant fix.

Thanks again for your work on this app.

Guido F.

[Ron Olsen]

The solution is to use the arrow icon at the upper right to view web pages in Safari, with more screen real estate and a larger font.

[bluegaspode]

Yes, the font is extremely small. As you say, it may be difficult to find a workaround for this problem, but I hope that one can be implemented in time.

I did some more search, but only to realize that the iOS browser I can use does not have any more means to be manipulated other then "dear little browser window, please load this page".
Let's hope for iOS6 (*sigh*) that then there are at least means to read and set the zoom level, so that SqueezePad could adopt automatically to the user and their preferred ways to see pages.

In the meantime one has to zoom here and there - or - like Ron Olson mentioned just open the big browser window with the arrows on the top right corner.
Don't forget that via the multitasking bar (double tap the home button) one can return pretty fast back to SqueezePad to try the other pregenerated links.

[bluegaspode]

Version 1.9.3 is available on the AppStore now:

SqueezePad now will start much faster from the background (in previous version this only worked for the first 10 minutes)

[Rick B.]

Hi, bluegaspode. Got the latest version and can't seem to get the "Context Menu" to work. On your site you say:

"A long touch on a menu item, the big coverart or a playlist entry brings up the context-menu."

Doesn't seem to work. A long touch on the cover art only gives me the title of the song that is currently playing. If I search on a song a long touch on it does nothing. If I long touch a playlist entry I get a little menu that includes a MusicIP Mix option - is that the problem?

I'm using SB3, SS 7.3.3 and this is my first use of Squeezepad.

Or am I doing something wrong?

[bluegaspode]

I'm using SB3, SS 7.3.3 and this is my first use of Squeezepad.

Or am I doing something wrong?

Hi Rick,

As of the App description SqueezePad officially only supports version 7.4 to 7.7 of the server.
While SqueezePad sort of also works with 7.3.x , context menus (as you realized) are not supported on this 3 years old server version. Also playback and server autodetection wouldn't work there.

It's a very tough task already to be compatible with 7.4 to 7.7 (and to test it) as in each major version Logitech introduced a lot of changes.

Please upgrade to at least version 7.4.x.
The latest version 7.7.1 is also very robust and much much faster than 7.3

[Rick B.]

Thanks, I've hung on to 7.3.3 for so long as it was the last version where the Player via headphone jack worked well with the Controller. Now that you (and iPeng) have enabled playback I guess it might be time to upgrade (but I'm very afraid!)

Cheers,