Sidecar 1.5

Ok, this will be the last update to Sidecar for a little while (no promises). 1.5 seems like a nice number to hold at while I work on some other projects. I’ve put enough hours into a project with a very limited audience to feel mildly guilty, but I’m having a lot of fun with this. Hey, I respect your life choices.

To catch up newcomers, Sidecar is a theme (jacket) for Simplify, my favorite music controller for Spotify, iTunes, Rdio and most web-based players. Sidecar currently only works on 27” monitors, but that limitation will be lifted on an upcoming version of Simplify¹. Your 11” Air will soon have a new option for decorative music control.

Sidecar 1.5 adds three new variations which feature soft lines, fades and a kind of “dripping” transition as the song progresses. The “Nightfall” one is guaranteed not to match any of your wallpapers, but I like it anyway. Kind of. You have to see it in the right light.

I renamed all of the variations in a manic moment. You’ll just have to live with that. I also added visual notifications on play and pause, and some JavaScript and CSS quirks have been smoothed out.

I restructured the source on Github to make it easy to play with, if you’re interested. Feel free to poke around and offer criticism/improvements.