History:Mobile Applications

GSoC Projects

Two of the Google Summer of Code projects for 2010 involve creating MusicBrainz mobile applications. The iPhone and Android applications will be created by jensl and jdamcd respectively.

This page is intended to explain the ideas behind the projects so that we can get some community feedback. Hopefully this will lead to a well defined structure and feature set by the start date on 24th May.

Feature List

1. Barcode search for releases
2. Add barcodes not already stored in MusicBrainz
3. Rate and tag
   1. Artists
   2. Releases
4. Text search for artists releases and more
5. Donate
6. Add releases to user collection
7. Display user collection

Activities flow chart

Barcode scan flow chart

User Interface

The UI design for both applications will be based on the following Android style mock-up/workflows. The intention is to have applications with similar feel but with the benefit of native platform user interfaces.

• Unregistered users
  • Search
  • Scan barcode
• Registered users
  • Log in
  • User view
  • Add barcode

Some notable deviations from those original mock-ups have already been identified:

• Collections feature available from menu
• Separate space for tags (resolving potential layout issues with many/long tags)
• Donation feature in menu or main activity
• Menu will provide toggle between read-only and editable layouts (that is the intention in the mock-ups but isn't shown explicitly)

UI differences on the iPhone and Android

Due to the different UI components and Human Interface Guidelines on both plattforms, there are some minor differences for the iPhone app compared to the shown mock-up. The application workflow will be the same for both plattforms.

1. Instead of single textfields and buttons, those components will be "merged" together in a tableview known from the Contacts App on the iPhone.
2. The iPhone app will have the common navigation bar on top of the screen, to navigate back from the current screen.
3. In general, we display the read-only view on the details pages. The edit button in the navigation bar will change to "edit mode", where you can rate and tag related artist, release etc.. The edit button is only available, if you are logged in.

For a better impression on the UI differences, first screenshots of the applications will be available soon.