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Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Earlier in the year, I wrote a music discovery desktop application in JavaFX called Music Explorer FX.  Since JavaFX also has a Mobile SDK, it made sense to write a version of MEFX for JavaFX enabled mobile devices.

Although the idea and basic usage remain the same, MEFX Mobile is not just a port of the larger desktop version, but a completely separate application.

MEFX_Search

Here’s the initial screen. You can enter an initial artist in the search box as expected, or, since I find entering text on a mobile device extremely difficult, you can hit the “Surprise Me!” button to have the app randomly pick a top rated artist for you.

Once you get your initial artist, you’re presented with the usual “visual profile” complete with image, and the “familiarity” and “hotness” gauges similar to the desktop version.

MEFX_Artist

Selecting the middle button will bring you to the core of the application, which is the “artist similarity” screen.

MEFX_Similar

Here you’ll see a number of artists recommendations as provided by the Echo Nest. The left and right buttons will scroll through the list, and selecting an artist will promote it to the main “artist profile” screen pictured previously.

At any point, selecting the third button will return you to the search screen. Selecting the first button will bring you to a screen where you can browse through your history, which provides an easy way for you to return to a previous selection.

MEFX_History

One of the neat things about JavaFX is that (generally) the code that runs on the desktop can run on a mobile device (and vice versa) with little issue. So if you don’t have a JavaFX-enabled phone, don’t despair; you can click on the launch button to run the exact same application as a Java web start desktop app.

For those interested, I wrote the application specifically for the HTC Diamond, which is pictured here running the application.

MEFX_Mobile_HTC

MEFX Mobile is an open source application and exists as a sample over at JFXtras.org. So feel free to download the source code and play around with it, or even install it on your own phone.

Enjoy!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 2:34 pm and is filed under JavaFX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition”

  1. Matt Van Bergen wrote:
    October 20th, 2009 at 6:37 pm |

    Sten, Nicely done. Time to take my music journey on the road…

  2. William wrote:
    October 21st, 2009 at 6:12 am |

    Very Nice app! I want this running on my mobile soon =D.

  3. Java desktop links of the week, October 26 | Jonathan Giles wrote:
    October 25th, 2009 at 5:57 pm |

    [...] Anderson blogged about Music Explorer FX Mobile Edition, which is a port of his award-winning Music Explorer FX to work on JavaFX-enabled mobile [...]

  4. hakim wrote:
    November 27th, 2009 at 8:48 am |

    can MEFX play music, like desktop version?

  5. sanderson wrote:
    November 27th, 2009 at 10:55 pm |

    Hi hakim,

    Unfortunately, no, the mobile version doesn’t play music — at least not this current version.

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