Yeah, it's a bit of a title and a half, but I'd like to report on... you guessed it.
Recently, I installed the latest Spotify update, to notice a quite drastic UI makeover (I think for the better). For people who have been driven away by Spotify's lack of accessibility in the past, you may wonna check this out.
1. A much cleaner Interface:
Many redundant/blank lines have been removed, resulting in a much cleaner, tidier (in most places, and we'll get to that).
You'll notice that the top bar in particular has had a redesign, and it's now where your account stuff resides.
Interestingly (and I can't tell if this is a bug in terms of accessibility or not) but there is now a dedicated play/pause button in the top menu too.
2. Context Menus:
Perhaps one of the biggest changes is that context menus have been adjusted so that they now feel familiar to, well... any other context menu you've seen. So you won't have to jump to the bottom of the window to access your options anymore.
3. Refinements to the Miniplayer:
If you enable Focus Mode over the Change progress icon and press Left and right, the position will actually change. This, however, does not hold true for the volume control for some reason. While we're on the subject of volume, the Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down shortcuts no longer work to adjust the volume to maximum and minimum values. Oh yeah, and you find the miniplayer above the track list, and below your playlists.
4. The Track List:
With Focus Mode, you can now also press Left and Right to access specific details in different columns, allowing you to, for example, jump to a specific album. The artist column header is strangely absent though. Focus unfortunately has a tendency to jump randomly from track to track, and is difficult to access the beginning and end of the tracks in the list. A dropdown has also been added to choose your sorting method (as well as being able to click the relevant column header). They both adjust accordingly. This is, however, how you can sort by artist.
I'll note here that the Alt+Left/Right shortcuts to go back and forward through history no longer work, and there doesn't seem to be a way to achieve the same thing through the UI (unless you go through your history manually from the beginning).
Right, that's most of the significant accessibility improvements I've found.
Okay. Admittedly kind of a useless post, but hey! I've seen worse, and I need something to do, right?
Course, feel free to chime in with comments, suggestions, what have you.
