Today marks the release of Amazon's CloudPlayer, a web application that streams your own music to you via the browser or any Android device. I've been trying it out for a couple hours now, long enough to be reminded of a horrible habit I have: purging browser tabs. After unintentionally killing my music stream twice, I remembered Fluid.
Fluid is an OSX application that allows you to create individual applications that encapsulate a browser that defaults to a single URL. They run in their own memory space, can be hidden, shown and Cmd-Tab'd to like any other native application, launched from the Dock, etc.
Creating an app out of a URL is easy in Fluid, but the way that Amazon.com handles authentication requires a quick, simple preference edit in order to properly log in and get cookied.
To get started, download Fluid.
Once you've installed it, run it and use the following URL:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/mp3/player
Enter a name for the application. I used "Amazon CloudPlayer."
Click on "Create" and wait while the application is prepared. When it's finished, an option to run it is presented. This didn't work for me, so I located the new app in the Applications folder and launched it.
Because this browser isn't cooked to Amazon, you're presented with a login form, but attempts to execute the login will result in a page being opened in your default browser, preventing the Fluid-encapsulated browser from receiving the required cookie.
Luckily, this is easily fixed. In the Preferences of the Amazon CloudPlayer app, click on the Advanced icon:
Then, select "Allow browsing to any URL":
Try the login again, and it should work fine.
For bonus points, familiarize yourself with Fluid's plugin architecture and engineer a way for the standard media buttons on the keyboard to be hooked into the controls inside the player - I would, but I'm slammed : )