Shiny! New UI
Today we give Blip.fm a bit of a facelift. We’ve reworked the current feature set to make everything simpler, faster, and cleaner. There’s not a whole lot of *new* stuff in this update, but you’ll notice that all the existing functionality is just more refined.
Under the hood there’s a lot going on, and it’s getting us ready for a big set of new features we’ve already started working on. Here’s a partial list of what’s been changed:
- Simplified top-level menu to get you to the three main streams (everyone, your favorite DJs, and yours)
- Easy access to all your stats and pages at the top right of every page
- Continuous scrolling for each station (eventually it’ll be continuous play throughout the entire site)
- Easily pause / resume the blipstream (auto-update when new blips are available)
- Easily add and toggle social networks you send notifications to on a blip-by-blip basis
- Sort favorite djs and listeners by last blip, by date added, and alphabetically
- Bandwith-limited users can now easily skip video blips
- Improved profile page
- Improved site performance
We’ve been testing this new UI at our beta site http://beta.blip.fm and taking feedback from users (email beta@blip.fm). It’s been a great way to let everyone check out the changes and keep us in the loop regarding what work and what doesn’t. In fact, the system has had such a positive response that we’re going to continue to push new stuff out to http://beta.blip.fm and let interested parties bang on the wheels before pushing it live.
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback for this set of updates. We’ve gone through several rounds of changes and we’re pretty excited to let this loose on the masses. Don’t worry, we’re not taking any breathers either, we’ve already begun the next round of features. This next round is going to bring new features to both DJs and listeners.
26 Comments
rxrx1776 on October 20th, 2009
♥
GR8FL on October 20th, 2009
I emailed comments…. thanks for paying attention
buck_ on October 20th, 2009
Great work! Love the new interface; looks much cleaner and more professional.
Thanks!
djstromer19 on October 20th, 2009
I really like how the top menu bar of my stats etc. stays when I browse to other dj’s . Looks sharp overall.
The biggest change that is mildly annoying to me is that I miss seeing my fav dj’s when I go to my homepage. Now I have to press fav dj’s . It feels lonelely without my favs on all the pages ? Not sure if that makes sense. No big deal I suppose.
Thanks again for an amazing site !!!
DJstromer
paulzy on October 20th, 2009
I see some if my suggestions are there now! Nice work guys.
GR8FL on October 20th, 2009
for anyone interested, started a place to capture comments on the NING - http://tinyurl.com/yl4jd6o feel free to add yours. Thanks
MusicIsMySoul on October 20th, 2009
I have a couple of DJ’s that are friends that are only on sporadically - I liked that I could go give them props on days they weren’t blipping so that they could have something to start with as opposed to just repropping the same songs over and over - it doesn’t seem I can do that anymore? I miss having my own URL when I’m listening to my fav dj’s or full so that I can click over easy to see what other twittering is going on (as that is the site I had there)…on that note - anyway for me to have TWO DJ names 
- I can’t get the MusicIsMySoul person on twitter to respond…they don’t do much (just wondering!)
randyhate on October 20th, 2009
other than not knowing how many new blips are streaming in after i blip something - once i do, the “# new” section up at the left top only changes when i blip or reblip a song.
a very mild annoyance.
but i love the new look and have been using the betablip since it was 1st available.
so much cleaner.
looking forward to new features to come as well.
@briangreene on October 20th, 2009
great work guys. is it my imagination or is it hoggin more mem in my browser. do you have benchmarks? shift-esc in chrome is giving me a tab by tab breakdown, after 5 vids its sucking on 50MB of mem.
as there are no real new features may I commend the new design enhancement.
but there are two draw backs. Direct propping is gone. A nudge service would be good replacement feature. Secondly reblip is a 3 click to finish event now, used to be a 2 click done. If reblip volumes fall off would you consider keeping the play bar button layout on each blip. ie.
reblip / playlist / prop
cheers.
avflox on October 20th, 2009
Ever since the change in UI all the songs coming from imeem are now no longer than 30 seconds. Did something else change? Why can’t we listen to the entire song any longer?
rico on October 21st, 2009
Love the new design, love the new lay out. All elements are positioned where you would expect them now. Great job, can’t wait to see what’s next…
Although I’m not a frequent reblipper I would expect this option to be visible without clicking the toolbox first. Maybe swap it with the “add this” feature?
One thing that’s really bugging me though is the fact that I can skip through pages in two ways. First by clicking on the up/down arrows, which makes the bliplist scroll. Secondly by clicking the pagenumbers at the bottom, which refreshes the whole page.
There seems to be no relationship between one and the other as when I scroll through the bliplist the pagenumber in the bottom will remain unchanged. Somehow I don’t get it…
PaperbackOnion on October 21st, 2009
You guys rock…ok, sorry for the obvious and painful wordplay.
Keep up the great work!
CD on October 21st, 2009
Before the update, If you clicked the time/date underneath a blipped song you got a list of previous times that song had been blipped, but not any longer as far as I can tell.
Now, you instead get to see who has propped that blip. Is this intentional, cause it’s not an improvement at all if you ask me.
Drognar on October 21st, 2009
I’m having just a bit of trouble here, when the new blips roll in from out auto updating, the page malfunctioning and all of a sudden I only see 3 random blips, help please!
Ponch on October 22nd, 2009
Cool UI. I wish there was a button to give you props for it…
twanvanelk on October 22nd, 2009
Little wheel button thingy does nothing in Firefox… Works fine in IE. Too bad I use Firefox. 
sandman5 on October 23rd, 2009
There’s currently a problem with wheel button functions inside a blip. It won’t open in Firefox.
me on October 23rd, 2009
It’s very very slow. Sorry guys, but it sucks. The design is nice, but very complicated to use.
Some suggestions:
a) A “blipped songs” list (a way that I can see IF I ever blipped this song)
b) What about genres? When I visit the main page, 99,99999% of the songs are not my thing. Result: I never visit the front page again and just stay on my “personal” page.
c) Easier way to say TY to people. I don’t always want to put up a new song just for saying thanks.
d) Way to remove “favorite djs” with one click. Imagine you have 250,000 “favorite djs” and want to remove 85% of them. LOL. Even with 50 tabs, and 10 web browsers it would take 2 weeks LOL
TY
lemon_jelly on October 24th, 2009
rubbish ! slower, sticky video’s , less search choice …
lillianwong on October 24th, 2009
Speed and efficiency is slower. Do not like having to click twice to reblip which is taking longer too, and to click twice to delete a blip which again is taking longer, and to click twice to get to your replies. Load time is longer too. Design layout has improved but can improve some more. A step forward but more work needs to be done to make it more efficient and faster.
Thebluestbutterfly on October 26th, 2009
I am not finding the player to embed on a blog. Has this been eliminated???
bliplunatic on November 17th, 2009
yeah - i notice the embed is gone too
bliplunatic on November 17th, 2009
Here’s a quick BlipEmbed bookmarklet that works when you’re on the single blip page
http://myopiclunacy.com/2009/11/17/blipfm-embed-code-bookmarklet
nitetalker on December 10th, 2009
I second the request by @me for a way to see if I ever blipped a song.
conleyseth on January 18th, 2010
Continuous scrolling for each station (eventually it’ll be continuous play throughout the entire site)
COOL!!!
Also would like 1 click favorite button
keep up the great work!
tometty on October 20th, 2009
Love the new UI, though I dislike having to click twice instead of once to reblip/delete a blip.
Currently, blip.fm seems to be broke.fm. Submitting blips fail and my timeline of blips by favorite djs has crashed to a halt.
Anyway, I appreciate the hard work you guys put in to give us a platform where we can share our music and ourselves.