K & M keys start and stop archive while in Spinitron Chat

[Amanda_Shauger]

Passing this along from a diligent streamer and chat listener: I do want to make you aware of an issue that I and other listeners have noticed while in the chat. I started noticing it maybe a couple of years ago, and figured out how to get around it, and truthfully didn’t think any more about it until I became aware that other listeners were experiencing it.

The problem is with the Spinitron Archive feature itself, and it only affects those in the chat, whether they’re on a phone or computer.

Most people who use the archive know that the main way to access it is to pull up the playlist page for the show in question, and then towards the top left of the page, find the little Play Arrow. Click or touch that, and Spinitron will start playing from the start of the first hour of the show. Of course, Spinitron also lets you manually adjust which hour and which 15 minute segment of that show you want to hear, but the default is the first hour.

Unfortunately, there are two keys, ‘k’ and ‘m’, that can also activate the archive. If you’re on your phone, it’s not obvious, but if you’re using a computer without a touch screen, if you hover the cursor over the Play Arrow, it will say “Play (k)”. And with the little volume icon to its right, if you hover the cursor over it, it will say “Mute (m)”.

No big deal, but if you’re in the chat and typing a comment, and you are using a combination of k’s and m’s, the archive stream will start and stop playing, and muting and unmuting, each time you type one of those keys.

And if you’re on a computer, listening to a show through its internal speakers, when the archive starts playing, you’ll hear both audio streams simultaneously, which is mind-numbing! If you’re listening to a show with your phone, when the archive starts playing, it will shut off the show you’re listening to, and just play the archive stream, which is both annoying and confusing.

I’ve cc:d Rosie on this because she and I and another one of her listeners were in the chat last night when this came up. It had actually come up weeks ago with this same listener in the chat, who was understandably very confused when “Archive Rose Lady” would start playing, or even “Archive Greg Rogan” would start playing over the real Rosie’s Rhythm Room. I didn’t put two and two together until last night, though.

Again, I’m sorry about the length, but I wanted to make clear what the problem was. It’s not a KXCI problem, I know: it’s a Spinitron problem, but it does affect the experience of KXCI listeners.

Thanks as always for being there,

[tom]

Hi Amanda,

We tried to fix this problem before. Or something like it. I tried to disable keyboard control of the player if input focus is in the chat. Either there’s some case in which that doesn’t work or there was a regression. I’ll put it on the todo list. Please thank the patient reporters who described the fault.

[Amanda_Shauger]

Thank you so much, Tom. I’ll pass it along. Let us know what you come up with. For what it’s worth, I haven’t heard that complaint again, but I don’t know if it’s persisting or not.

[tom]

I think nearly everyone who uses Spinitron playlist chat with a station that also has the archive player has experienced this bug. I guess most are just confused by it. And very few know to report issues on this forum. And if they do, is it worth their trouble?

[Amanda_Shauger]

From the Spinitron Chat User:

So, I think that Spinitron fixed the problem!

This afternoon on Soul Stories, I have left a few comments in Tyina’s chat box, and even after hitting the k and m keys, there was no playing of the archive at all!

I will need to verify this on my computer…I only left the comments on my phone…but it is definitely behaving itself now.

Thank you for running interference with Spinitron, Amanda!

Dan

[tom]

We deployed a fix on Friday morning. I’m sorry that took so long.

I was confused earlier because I remembered fixing the problem in our open source player. But I had forgotten that I had not managed to get that fix into the asset build on spinitron.com.