It's nice and probably uses way less system resources, but it definitely isn't as "polished" as the Flash version was. Not sure if that's a limitation of the HTML5/JS/CSS combo or if they just need to work on it more. It's mostly just little things, like missing visual fade transitions or a UI that doesn't look like it's been repeatedly bleached. But they add up to a noticeable difference, I think--the HTML5 app just isn't as vibrant.

That being said, I always thought their Flash app was amazingly slick and polished, so it's a tough act to follow I suppose.

EDIT: Plus if they are going to go this far with HTML5 it'd be awesome if they could cut the Flash cord entirely. Not sure if that's technically possible though.

The responsiveness is a much nicer feature than visual transitions and the such, and for a start of a new but similar design I quite like it.

I know the Grooveshark fans who are Linux users will appreciate the increased stability as well.

On Ubuntu 10.04 x64 Flash is pretty stable for me, except when I've got 40 Firefox tabs open (yes I'm seeing a therapist about that) and then try to run some Flash app that's more complex than a mere Youtube video. No more popping htop to manually kill nspluginwrapper that's in some kind of infinite loop ftw.

Completely off topic, but I typically open ~100 tabs – there's nothing wrong with that. It's just how I work most efficiently.

Yep. It uses JavaScriptMVC. Looks like it's model, view, and controller.

I'm not really sure this is HTML5. Looking at the source code, you don't see many of the hallmarks of HTML5. There HTML tag itself is distinctly XHTML 1.0 Strict, and the lack of any true HTML5 tags (e.g. SECTION, NAV) imply to me a hybrid -- a platypus, if you will. They do, interestingly, use HTML5 data tags.

Funny thing - everything works amazingly, until I turn Flashblock on http://i.imgur.com/HFe8h.png then all my stuff disappears (favs, playlists) and this js error hangs my firefox to death.

Besides that, it's awesome, even better than before.

Chrome sandboxes Flash. If Flash is on your machine but disabled for Firefox, you can preserve the configurations that allowed this, and use Chrome as a dedicated Grooveshark / misc. Flash player. Depending on your arrangement, quitting Chrome can mean quitting Flash, so it can be a pretty elegant solution.

Hat-tip to Gruber for the idea http://daringfireball.net/2010/11/flash_free_and_cheating_wi....

Exelent UX, but the flashblock problem is anoying.. I think they sould put some empty flash animation somewhere on the main page so that you could hit "play" on flashblock.

You can 'allow flash for this site' anyways, I turned off now to see what happens and oooops :)

Ditto... Unable to login with flash block enabled.

i think this was a great move. much faster than the previous flash-based site. grooveshark just keeps getting better and better, every month.

When I try on my iPad, it says I need flash...

They're still using flash for the sound playback.

an HTML5 playback fallback for devices that don't have flash would be amazing (and doable).