This quick little Add-On was written as a proof of concept to respond to all the complainers and fun-haters who go on about “why do you have to look just like iTunes?!” and “can’t you get rid of the browser? I don’t want it!!”
So if you see people making such noises, do please point them here and we’ll try to straighten them out, yea?
You see, unlike Firefox, Songbird isn’t tied down to just one layout for the user interface. We leverage and leapfrog the might of Mozilla to allow Feathers to specify new CSS or new XUL or both — and thus be able to mash up the basic UI elements that define a media player in any way you can imagine.
For instance, we’ve created our own playlist element that’s completely accessible from javascript. In this way you can create your own playlisting functionality separate from the functionality we implement in the app, without needing to know much more than how to program javascript for webpages.
The Now Playing Add-On is a great example of an external developer leveraging Songbird’s available XUL elements to create fantastic new functionality outside of Songbird’s basic player scheme.
So whether it’s new XUL panels or buttons to inject into the main player window or brand-new layouts for your playback, Songbird provides far more UI flexibility than that old stinky platinum-cum-brushed-metal curmudgeon from Cupertino.
Us birders have been giving Santa’s hardworking elves a run for their cookies this holiday season, and we’re ready to release a final Songbird 0.4 for Developers just in time to ring in the new year.
It’s been less than 2 months since we released Songbird 0.3 and introduced our new open development platform, but we’ve built in a few new juicy tidbits that we couldn’t wait to get out. In particular, check out the following new features:
Songbird display panes allow add-on developers to easily populate specific panes in the user interface with their own content, while providing the user a consistent and flexible way to interact with add-ons that use them.
Improved iPod support (via the default-distributed iPod add-on) makes significant improvements to the UI, and now supports all iPods except the touch and phone. (Expect to see more iPod improvements, as well as support for other devices in 0.5+.)
General tuning of the application’s quality and stability is becoming a greater focus as we look toward our end-user debut. With this release, we’ve cleaned up the options dialog, playlist and library sorting and reordering, media download error states, Web media history, and a bunch of bugs.
A comprehensive XUL periodic table – including Songbird-specific elements – is now available for add-on developers and feathers creators as part of the default-distributed Songbird Developer Tools add-on.
Play count and skip tracking is now implemented for all of you looking to do your own smart-playlist-like features and Audioscrobbler-like library mining.
Getting started with extension development can be time consuming, so we’ve built a tool to let you skip past the first two hours. They are boring hours anyway. Now you can pick a title, enter your name, select some UI sample code, and start hacking. Eventually you’ll need to understand the details, but in the meantime you can still have fun.
On the second day of Festivus, my true love gave to me…. Songbird 0.4rc2. Okay, so it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as nicely - but it sure is more useful than two turtle doves.
Download 0.4rc2, hammer away, and as usual, if you find any issues, bugs, crashes, or money-grubbing Scrooges - file a bug in our Bugzilla so we can squash ‘em in time for 0.4 final!
We love all the feathers that have been coming in lately. Since the 0.3 pre-release lots of people have been customizing their birds, and the results have been pretty cool.
With 0.4 coming out though it’s time to make sure the existing feathers continue working. Fortunately not too much has changed, and updating is almost as easy as modifying the version compatibility metadata.
If you designed feathers for 0.3, take a look at our Updating to 0.4 HOWTO (Thanks to Pino for helping with this).
