What's wrong with the Spotify GUI

16 February 2009rant, GUIviolations

I think it would be far easier and quicker to discuss what is right with the Spotify interface. But because this is my blog and I wan’t to complain about it, I’m going to talk about the bad bits.

First, an introduction. Spotify, if you didn’t already know, is a social music streaming program which allows you to listen to loads of music and share playlists with your peers and strangers; similar to the web-based service Pandora. It’s a program that you download and install on your Windows or Mac OS X computer, and uses peer-to-peer technology to transfer music.

But it’s the user interface that I object to.

I’m currently running Spotify on Windows XP in Classic mode, with no ClearText enabled. Something a little like this:

FAIL Number 1: Not obeying native UI

If there’s nothing more arrogant and ego-centric about a piece of software, it’s using it’s own interface rendering libraries and bitmaps; instead of respecting the native interface and the user’s choice. A Windows application should look and behave (more on that later!) like a Windows application. Similarly, a Mac application should look and behave like a Mac application.

I’ve been through the Spotify UI, and there is nothing in there that cannot be accomplished using standard Windows controls. Skinned applications are nothing new; they’ve been around for as long as I can remember. But that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

The non-standardness even lacks consistency. At least if they’re going to use a horrid-looking skin they could extend the courtesy to the menus.

One other niggle this induces is with the control buttons. I hope this screenshot demonstrates my point adequately:

Essentially, because they didn’t respect my choice of Windows interface, their control buttons aren’t lined up or the same size as the ones on all my other windows. This is especially problematic when working with maximised windows. There isn’t even visual feedback for cursor hovering so I don’t know where one button ends and the other starts.

Imagine I have a standard maximised window at the top level (Firefox), and Spotify underneath. I click somewhere on Firefox’s minimise button and it is minimised. Then I click minimise on Spotify and, because of it’s obscure button sizing and lack of visual boundary indicator, it restores to a smaller-sized window in the middle of my screen.

FAIL Number 2: Not behaving as expected

Tab Order is the first complaint. How many people use tab to move to the password box after typing in a username? I do, usually. But not in Spotify it seems.

Entering the Preferences section (I can’t call it a window, because it isn’t one), I started to complete my Last.fm credentials. Click in the username field. Type. Tab. Type… nothing. I don’t know where the focus disappears to when I hit tab; but it’s not the password box. But if I press Tab again, it focuses the Search box. Weird? I thought so too.

It also does this annoying thing of highlighting text in a text box when you click in it; but not on password boxes. Very odd.

Inadequate feedback is next on the list.

Still in the Preferences area, after clicking Apply, nothing happens apart from the Apply button gets disabled. This is fine – but where do I go now? It’s not a window so I can’t click a cross. There’s no Cancel. There’s no OK.

After spending a little time searching, there’s a small web-browser-esque back left-pointing arrow in the top right toolbar-ish area. If a user has to spend too much time searching around to find out where to go – the GUI sucks.

As it turns out, you can also click on the icons in the left navigation pane.

Search is next on the menu. Specifically the menu item. Clicking it does nothing but place the cursor in the search box on the toolbar-type area; and this is not immediately obvious to an untrained eye.

Conclusion

Forgetting the graphical interface for a moment, Spotify is a great idea. And on a technical and functional level, I can’t fault it. Listening to music is gapless (no buffering), high-quality, and it works well.

But graphically it is awful. And for that reason, I’m out. At least for now, anyway.