Songbird 0.5rc2 is available for testing

By raffel raffel Mar 19, 2008 7:35 pm Permalink
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0.5 RC2

Download 0.5rc2 (release notes)

The oh5 train is getting ready for its final stop. In the meantime, we’re making another local stop!

In this update we’ve made a number of fixes to our MTP support on Windows so be sure to plug in your MTP device and give it a try! And, please share your findings on our MTP Device Compatibility Wiki Page.

We don’t want to bore the regular passengers so if you’re not sure what’s new in 0.5 you can read our 0.5rc1 summary (which also contains additional requirements and developer resouces).

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 0.5 final!

All aboard!!

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3 Trackbacks

  1. Songbird Version 0.5 RC2 zum Testen…

     Weiterempfehlen

    ……

  2. [...] 0.5 [Homepage] [Release Notes] [Review] Release: Release Candidate 2 Type of Application: Media player Changes: [...]

  3. [...] dni wstecz pojawiła się wersja 0.5rc2 Songbirda. Nie mam pojęcia, czy to tylko u mnie tak jest, ale Songibrd wciąż jest strasznie oporny i [...]

13 Comments

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  1. jem Mar 19, 2008 11:46 pm Permalink

    Great job folks on this new alternative :)

  2. Superkoop Mar 20, 2008 9:52 am Permalink

    Is working great for me! ^_^

  3. eiht Mar 21, 2008 2:17 pm Permalink

    Any idea why they took out watch folders? And if they are going to be back in this release? Thanks I want to run the newer versions but have to stick with 2.5 unfortunately. Why take it out? Lack of watch folders is the only reason I don’t use Itunes besides the bloat.

  4. Wagaf-d Mar 21, 2008 4:52 pm Permalink

    Great job ! Songbird platform is realy nice now.
    I don’t like the default skin – too dark.
    I think it will prevent people from switch from iTunes or WMP (even WMP 11 is not so dark)

  5. kamisori Mar 22, 2008 5:41 am Permalink

    You guys DO know that all your songbird-logos are… uhm farting…. do you?

  6. Versusray Mar 22, 2008 4:51 pm Permalink

    kamisori: Maybe this indicates Songbird is still buggy? Maybe the puffs will vanish with the first stable and bug-free version?

  7. Ken Mar 23, 2008 8:05 am Permalink

    Hi,
    Where is the source tarball for SongBird 0.5RC2??
    -K

  8. raffel Mar 23, 2008 11:58 am Permalink

    @eiht
    Unfortunately, we had some issues with the way watch folders were originally implemented. We understand a lot of users would like to see it back in Songbird and it’s definitely on our ToDo list. I’ve noted your additional request for the feature!

    @Wagaf-d
    As we progress towards a 1.0 release we’ll definitely be re-evaluating the default skin. Thanks for your feedback!

    @Ken
    The 0.5rc2 branch source is not exposed publicly. Sorry, we haven’t got to it yet! But, you can snag the latest source here (we’ll post the 0.5 branch as soon as it is final):
    http://publicsvn.songbirdnest.com/

  9. MA Mar 24, 2008 3:37 am Permalink

    Good to see progress, but just puzzling that there’s no sign of improving performance. For those of us with more than a few hundreds tracks, it’s so slow that it’s unusable (20k tracks on E6750 / 2GB).

    Wouldn’t it be better to make the *core* work before worrying about all the bells and whistles?

  10. brizz Mar 24, 2008 8:56 am Permalink

    Is there a way to get the track editor working on OSX for 0.5rc2? It comes up as a 1 px wide horizontal line for me.

  11. raffel Mar 24, 2008 9:58 am Permalink

    @MA
    Here’s some good news: part of the plan for 0.6 includes working on media library performance and optimization improvements. Now that we’re a slightly more mature project we expect to dedicate cycles in each release going forward to opportunities where we can improve P&O in Songbird.

    @brizz
    We’ve deprecated the track editor for one release (it will be back in 0.6.) Here’s why: we have embarked on a project to allow writing metadata back to the file and part of that project includes major updates to the functionality of the track editor. We noticed some problems in the track editor in 0.5 and we decided since we’re a small team rather than fix something that is about to undergo change we’d turn it off for a single release cycle and re-introduce it. Sorry for not calling this out sooner. In the interim, you can edit track metadata in the library/playlist by clicking on the field you want to change.

  12. MA Mar 25, 2008 3:37 am Permalink

    Thanks, raffel – that’s great news.

    And, of course, the reason I’m here nagging is because Songbird appears excellent in many ways, so it’s frustrating that I can’t use it. :)

    Could I request that you blog as soon as the nightly contains performance improvements that the devs believe will make it usable for the likes of me? Thanks.

  13. raffel Mar 25, 2008 10:01 am Permalink

    @MA
    In general, we do our best to blog about updates worth noting in our nightly builds. It’s particularly useful when we think we’ve hit a milestone on stuff we’re working on. We benefit greatly from the community giving it a spin and providing feedback. Hopefully, we’ll have some stuff to blog about that will interest you during the course of our next release! Also, I should set your expectations – 0.6 represents our first release cycle where we’re actually dedicating a chunk of work to focus solely on P&O improvements. Going forward this will be an ongoing effort but we don’t expect to solve everything in 1 release. :)