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I just wonder, what on this site is done in flash that couldn't be done with plain AJAX/Html, appart from the obvious streaming part ?

Just wondering, they may have some reasons



Actually it uses the flex framework (as you can see by looking at the scrollbars and the tooltips) that then produces an edible binary .swf for the flash player :).

Back to the topic, as a music site developer myself, I can assure you that everything (except streaming[1]) you see on grooveshark can be implemented using XHTML, a JS framework (I love jQuery über alles) and an HTTP backend. Wheter or not do it depends mainly from the target of your audience and the browsers they use, because to achieve 100% browser compatibility, especially when dealing with older IE versions, imposes a bit of headbanging over their quirks and issues. Another point is performance: on older machines, animating big elements on the page (like grooveshark does) causes flicker and a clumsy experience for the user. The last point is maintainability and integration: after all, flash software is another piece of the stack you have to coordinate, implement, integrate and deploy.

So, it's a bit controversial which path to choose; on our project we're following a mix of the two, by reducing the flash implementation to the bare minimum to accomplish streaming, upload (ajax upload via iframe is a bit of a mess) and a set of JS interfaces to implement the rest of the interface via XHTML. Similar to http://playlist.com 's approach.

The last consideration that comes to my mind is purely ethical/political: I prefer to use open standards and contribute back to open projects via source code, and not be forced to use closed technologies and tools and contribute back via cash, having to read clumsy documentation, little opportunity to improve anything, and the list could go on and on.. :).

[1] Luckily this is gonna change with HTML5!


Thanks for the complete answer !

I found the moving elements on grooveshark to be quite a bit annoying anyway.

Also the database is much less complete than the one of www.deezer.com as of now.




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