What browsers work with kJams Webserver?

[HowardBrazee]

I tried testing the browsers on my Mac while running kJams. Vivaldi got to the https://karaoke.kjams.com:12345 signon page, but I couldn't sign on (names in the drop down were Maxx, Caz, Dave Cotter, Howard, James, & Jaquelyn - I selected Howard, as I signed on there using wtkJams). But trying to use Safari, Chrome, or Firefox on my Mac took too long to respond. The Wiki has settings for Safari that I couldn't find, and an extension for Firefox which won't work with my version of Firefox.

I went to my iPad and logged in from Safari. It looks like wtkJams. But I failed to connect with Firefox or Chrome.

Some people who sing at our senior living have smart phones, I don't think anybody would bring laptops (but they might, if this makes things easier).

[DeusExMachina]

The web address would not be "https://karaoke.kjams.com:12345 ".
The server address will be either the numeric local IP address plus port number you assigned in kJams>Preferences>Server (separated by a colon) e.g., 192.168.1.10:12345
or else it will be the name of the machine that is set in >System Preferences…>Sharing followed by ".local", followed by a colon and the port number, e.g., HowardBrazees-MacBook-Pro.local:12345.
Any browser will work with the first, and any browser that supports mDNS/BonJour will work with the second, including Safari.

[dave]

well, what he said! the new Bonjour browser firefox extension is zeroconf-lookup. but i couldn't get it to work.

[HowardBrazee]

So it looks as though I could connect with either:
Howard Brazee’s Computer.local:80 (With or without https://)
or
192.168.0.10:80

I tried the first and it Googled myself. Maybe that's because my computer name has spaces in it.
But I entered the 2nd with a bunch of browsers on my iPad and on my iMac and they all connected.

I added a new person. It appears that I can create a new password for that person from within kJams Pro, or delete that person.
I also changed the number of songs to 2000. (We inherited enough disks to rip almost a thousand disks. These are of various quality, and I gave up when some created two disks on the finder which I could not eject and needed to shut down my Mac manually). Or should I keep that number slightly above the number of songs I have ripped?

I have Internet Sharing turned off on my Mac's sharing settings. I was wondering if that mattered.

[dave]

Howard Brazee’s Computer.local:80

you don't need to append ":80", that's the default
also, to get the CORRECT name, look in the Sharing preferences panel, it will give you a lower-case name with dashes that is NOT exactly the same as your computer's name

use Safari since it has bonjour browsing built in. or install that one for firefox but that requires a second, separate download and install, which may be non-trivial if you're not computer savvy.

I also changed the number of songs to 2000

do you mean in the server prefs? yeah you can do that, just be on the lookout for performance problems if you have a lot of users at once making requests. the number is related to how many song entries your server serves to clients, not related to how many songs you HAVE.

the problem of "i can't eject this one disc that shows two volumes in the finder" is a known issue that apple will never fix. literally unplug the USB cable from the computer to get it out, you don't need to restart.

[HowardBrazee]

Ahh, that would be: http://howard-brazees-computer.local/

We only have a half dozen singers and a dozen lurkers so far. I expect people to use whatever browsers are on their smartphones. And some will turn in sheets with songs they select from printed lists.

[dave]

people are expected to use wtkJams on their smartphones

[HowardBrazee]

I really couldn't tell any difference between my iPad's browsers and wtkJams in testing, other than the money.

[dave]

if that works for you

[DeusExMachina]

Ahh, that would be: http://howard-brazees-computer.local/

I did put the hyphen in my example for a reason!
My version of the server files allows the user to opt out of being forced to the App Store to purchase WTKJams and just use the server on mobile. Not sure if this change was ever made canonical.
I made a number of changes also to help the site work correctly on mobile but there are still a few things that do not work correctly, like playlists. But few people seem to use those, so you might not even ever notice.
As for the "Maximum number of songs returned in search results" value, I seriously doubt you'll need a value over 1500. I would bet for your library, a value of a few hundred would work fine. If you have 1000 disks, with an average of 16 tracks per disk, that is at most 16,000 unique songs, and more likely less than half that (since many disks probably have vocal guide tracks, and duplicate files across disks).
As a result, any given search will probably have far less than a few dozen results to return.
You can check this by doing your own search for the most common terms in tracks. I used "love" and "Beatles" and "Sinatra" to give me an idea of that a top end value should be. I got 5266, 513, and 608 tracks respectively. I have a HUGE library.
I set the pref value to 1500 and never have a problem.

[DeusExMachina]

well, what he said! the new Bonjour browser firefox extension is zeroconf-lookup. but i couldn't get it to work.

Dave: pretty sure mDNS just works in Firefox. The various plugins just add the capability to do zeroconf look up (which until recently in Safari was implemented in the Bookmarks, but was stupidly removed from Safari 11). So if he already knows the mDNS name, he should be able to type that in directly and find the server.
If you had a problem with zeroconf-lookup, and you're not on Quantum, try ciaociao.

So far as I can tell, if you've moved to Quantum, you're SOL.

[dave]

right, i think it will work IF YOU KNOW THE NAME to look for, but if you want to BROWSE, which is far far better, i think browsing won't work, without jumping through some tech hurdles

[HowardBrazee]

Using Firefox on my Mac, I can click on any playlist except "Library" and browse the whole playlist. When I click on "Library", I have to do a search.

Using Chrome or Safari on my iPad, I don't seem to be able to touch (click) on playlists.

Using wktJams, I can't find how to look at playlists at all, (just my own).

So I don't know how to let people browse if I don't print out song sheets.

[dave]

when i said "browse" i was talking about bonjour browsing, ie: selecting the venue from an available list of venues.

what you're referring to 'browsing' is viewing the contents of your playlists. there is no way to "browse" the library, except to do a "search" which includes every song. the search string for that is:

\*

note that it can be very slow or can crash your device, if you have a very large library.

in wtkJams, once you log in, the buttons for tonight, favorites, history, and rotation are at the bottom

[DeusExMachina]

As I said earlier, I made some simple changes that allowed the server site to load and run on mobile, but that left a few things still broken, one of which was the ability to view playlists. Doing that is beyond my ability at this time, as it involves learning an entirely new paradigm that would only have one use, editing the kJams server page, that I would probably never use again!
And since I'm dumb, learning all that would be a chore!

The Library playlist in the web server is intended to do just what you are seeing, show search results from the Library.
For most people that is the only one they'll even use. My experience is that few people actually use the History and even fewer use Favorites.

But as it is it works well enough for I'd say 95% of how people use it.

In WTKJams, you view your playlists by logging in and then clicking the desired playlist icon on the bottom of the screen.
You can only view your own playlists, not other people's playlists. That wouldn't even make sense!

None of the server techniques are set up to browse the library. It's a search and select paradigm.
If you want to allow people to browse, you'll have to go outside the kJams universe.
One thing you can do is export your library to CSV, open that file in a program like Numbers or Excel, convert that file to pdf, copy that pdf to your devices, then load that pdf in your browser.
If you are ambitious, you can even make that page available from your machine by converting it to HTML and putting it in the Sites Folder in your User Folder, and turning on Internet Sharing in  -> System Preferences -> Sharing and then people on your local network will be able to see stuff in that folder by navigating to http://yourcomputername.local/~yourname/ (e.g., http://howard-brazees-computer.local/~HowardBrazee/) in their web browser. You can also just put the file in /Library/WebServer/Documents and then people will be able to see files in http://yourcomputername.local/ (http://howard-brazees-computer.local/) without having to access your specific user account.

Keep in mind, though, that if you change the library, you will have to redo that file in order for it to be in sync and accurately reflect your new library).

Also, keep in mind that while this will allow users to browse your library, it will not give them any interaction with kJams itself. To select songs to put in their Tonight list, they will have to go back to the kJams server page, find that track, and click the "Add to tonight" button.