The Songbird 1.4.1 Beta is ready for download!
We’ve just about finished wrapping up Songbird 1.4.1, but we’d like a few eyes (and ears) on it. Mind taking our beta build out for a spin and letting us know what issues you find? If everything shapes up, we’re looking to do a final release on Monday next week.
What’s new since Songbird 1.2?
- MSC (Mass Storage Class) Device Support – Sync tracks (and playlists on compatible devices) to MSC devices. (Windows only, requires the MSC add-on)
- CD Rip Support – Pretty self-explanatory, right? Lookup metadata from Gracenote, and rip CDs to Flac or Ogg (Windows only, requires the CD Rip add-on).
- Purple Rain Feather – We built a new Feather addressing many of the issues/feedback we’ve heard from users.
For more info on the release, please see our release notes.
(The astute amongst you might notice its version # is 1.4.1b2, we spun an internal b1 build solely for update testing, so don’t worry – you didn’t miss anything)
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84 Comments
SubscribeIs 1.4.1 faster too? Because 1.2 can be awfully slow compared to WMP 12 on my Win 7 machine
I’m assuming CD rip and MSC device support WILL be integrated in the Linux version soon right?
I’m assuming the Windows version can be installed on Windows 7 as well? It might be helpful to include Windows 7 in the title or a note about how it’s not ready for Windows 7 yet…
Thanks for the awesome work! =)
I would assume it works on 7 because 1.2 did too, jump no library, jump lists/player controls on mouseover support
Liking it so far, seems a lot faster and looks a lot better. The only complaint I have with the new skin is that the menupopups within menulists have white text on a white background and there is no arrow thing that makes it look like a dropdown menu.
I’m using my Vandelay Industries addon to test this so maybe there’s something I need to update it?
@Tushar Khandelwal:
Songbird does work on Windows 7, but it isn’t actively supported (so there are some kinks), and technologies such as aero snap wont work until Nirvana. Whilst I haven’t really paid enough attention though to be sure it still exists, in Windows 7 sometimes the last 2 seconds of songs gets cut off.
Regardless, in 1.4, there is a warning during installation that Windows 7 isn’t actively supported and there may be issues.
@Eric N: G’day, I have spoken to the Songbird team about the performance issues, and they would like people to post detailed bug reports to http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Songbird with full details of the situation, what causes it, and if possible, how similar players compare for the same case.
this gives me just enough time to purplerain-ify all the images on the wiki! noice!
A couple of feedback items:
Could you please shrink the mini-player back down vertically? It used to fit nicely inside a Windows title bar or status bar but now it covers up part of the window and it’s not resizable vertically.
Could you change the “New Playlist” option to read “Add New Playlist” or “Create New Playlist” so it has a verb to differentiate it from my actual playlists? I keep thinking that it’s an actual playlist I forgot to rename. I know it has the different icon but honestly those icons are a little too small to make out.
Awesome! Now make it start up at whatever the last window size set was, make add-ons like LyricsMaster and Mashtape work again and we’ll finally be ready for a stable release…
And more feedback (not to pile on): The icons (yellow bird and black bird) are no longer consistent. And I hate splash screens. They usually just tell me that the program that’s about to start up is bloated.
That reminds me I need to make my Songbird icon black again the yellow one is ugly
Liking everything but my ipod classic 120gig no longer being recognised (since 1.2, even with many formats etc)
And the new splash screen is really really bad, especially when compared to the nice designs used elsewhere, it seems completely unrelated to the product at all and looks almost like an ad for some dodgy site lol.
Other then those two things everything else runs well
Am hoping for an ipod update soon though
@Codex: does the iPod not support MSC? No, sorry, I was just joking
And it’s really a bad joke.. Too bad, to be limited by such a proprietary architecture.
Standards rulez!
But I do agree with you about the splahscreen
Congratulations for the work, but… what happens with Linux and Mac OS?
Does CD-Rip work on Win7 64-Bit?
How do I disable the new splash screen in about:config?
Like Codex and k already mentioned, it will probably turn off users.
there’s a known nasty bug on Linux (#17082) regarding gstreamer libs that doesn’t allow Songbird to startup, can’t find it on 1.4.1b2 release notes.
Should we expect it not to be fixed for 1.4.1 final?
Just a heads up: The new font (I assume it is Lucida Sans) looks jagged and unreadable on Windows XP with ClearType turned off. (I get dizzy when I look at a screen with ClearType on so I have to keep it off)
Also, thank you for bringing back to black bird!!!
Good new functions for most people (personally I don’t use MSC or CD rip) but I really really dislike the new Feather. Unfortunately Gonzo doesn’t seem to be supported that well…
Are there any well supported Feathers out there which looks similar to Gonzo?
@sili: you may be interested by that one. It’s compliant with 1.4.1 already.
http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1661
A bug has been filed requesting that a “disable splash screen” option be added. You can check it out here:
http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=19273
I agree, it looks horrendous, not to mention the fact that I really wouldn’t want a splash screen no matter how it looked….
Thank you for explicitly marking MSC and CD-Rip as windows-only. It’s a long overdue dose of honesty from POTI and I look forward to Linux and Mac support in the near future.
Also, I love the new feather. Keep up the great work!
Hi. its quite fast and the purple feather looks very nice.
I am really looking forward to sync my ipod nano the first time. hope there is a way to get the album covers on my ipod ,)
After a couple days with the ‘Purple Rain’ feather I start to like it. But the splash-screen is a HUGE no-no! Please remove that thing, it belongs somewhere in the nineties.
Nice. I’m liking the new skin more than I thought I would.
My only complaints are:
- CD Rip Windows only? Why???
- The pane bars are a lot bigger now… Can I hide them in any way, since I don’t use those panes?
- Can the navigation pane be hideable in “browser mode”?
Anyway, great job, keep it up, looking forward to video capabilities.
And thanks for bringing back the sweet original Songbird mascot for the icon!
katana346, nice one reporting the ‘issue’! I couldn’t find anything from about:config no matter how much I dug.
Everyone, remember to vote at http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=19273
@Miroslav and others in regards to CD ripping.
Unfortunately, this release only has Windows CD ripping (it is the first iteration of CD ripping), however, Mac OSX support for CD ripping has already been added to developer tree for the release after this one. Not sure why, but its probably because they didn’t want to push this release back any more (and Windows has the largest market share). Each OS added for features adds a considerable strain on testing, and I think it probably does make sense to release asap.
Not sure whats happening with linux support, however, I guess it will show up eventually. Technically, the developer library they are using for accessing CD’s supports Linux/OSX/Windows. Linux support just needs to be hooked up and tested.
In terms of the splash screen, I personally like the look of it. However, I totally disagree that the splash screen should be removed. The purpose of a splash screen is to show users that something is happening, so that they don’t freak out thinking the program isn’t loading (its actually loaded before the Mozilla libraries). Furthermore, it has little overhead, so its unlikely disabling it would have any benefit. From a usability point of view, splash screens are a good thing. Granted speeding startup is the BEST way, but this is a good way to stop confusion for now.
@Tier777. CD ripping isn’t working on 64bit here
Already posted a bug report..
@all
In terms of purplerain, for those of us supporting Songbird users, it adds a few usability enhancements that I think may make things better for newer users.
That being said, I think the new theme looks MUCH better than the old one. Just my opinion..
@NickM – Can you email me a screenshot so I can see specifically which menupopup you’re talking about? stevel at songbirdnest dot com
@Mike M – The vertical height increase of the miniplayer was a conscious decision… we had some feedback from other users that the previous one was just *too small*. This is one of the cases, where we know there is a contingent of users who want something smaller, but there are others (more?) who want something larger. I think this is just going to have fall within the realm of 3rd party Feathers (and if we have time, we might look into a microplayer layout). In any case, I would file a Feature Enhancement request in our Bugzilla so we can track how many users want it.
We also looked at “Create New Playlist” and “Add New Playlist” but felt it was too wide a string (especially in other localisations) so it was consistently getting cut off… hence why we just kept it at “New Playlist”.
@Brett – mashTape & Lyricmaster should both be working already… those were two that I redesigned to help look good with Purple Rain. Are you sure you’re running the latest versions? Also there shouldn’t be any more yellow bird icons… they should all be black birds. You can remove the splash screen if you really care by renaming (or deleting) the splash.bmp file in the Songbird directory.
@Aljullu, @Forest, @Miroslav Mazel – we’re still working out a couple of (minor) kinks in MSC on Mac, and hope to have that soon (but didn’t want to hold the release for it). We haven’t implemented it on Linux though. For CD-Rip, we should have a Mac solution for the next release… if you’re running trunk builds you can try it out in the nightlies, but it requires code that wasn’t able to be backported to this stable release. Ostensibly, the SDK we use (Gearworks) for CD-Rip should also work in Linux, but we haven’t had the time to code or test that up.
@KotW, @katana346, @Pr1me – In the meantime you can simply delete splash.bmp to get rid of the splash screen.
@htrex – Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that bug… I’ll check with QA to see if we can Release Note this for final.
@Noah – Hrm, we’re using Lucida Grande and it looks okay on our WinXP systems. Ironically, we happen to think it looks better with ClearType turned off (with ClearType on, it produces some colour banding for disabled text which uses alpha transparency)
@sili – There are a couple now (look for ones by Michael Purses, aka Boosh, he’s been updating his so far). This is something I expect will pick up in the next couple of weeks as people update their Feathers.
@Stevel – Can I send you a screenshot of the issue?
@Noah – Please do
stevel at songbirdnest dot com
Error installing on Windows 7.
An error dialog says:
“Songbirs is unsupported on this version of windows.”
@Stevel – thanks for the quick reply. There must be some weirdness when upgrading from the previous beta to this one. Half of the icons remained the yellow bird and half turned black. Some of the add-ons functioned, but a bunch didn’t. I did a complete uninstall and deleted app data folders and settings and did a totally fresh install, and now everything seems to be working properly.
I still think the splash screen needs to go or at the very least changed to be consistent with the nice art and logos throughout the rest of the program.
@Brett – Yeah, Windows has some icon caching where it won’t always update the icon. Right-clicking it and selecting properties to have it repull the icons from the .exe usually does the trick. The add-ons might not have updated right away (since your old ones were still compatible with this one… which was an erroneous bug on our part, sorry). Triggering a manual update (Options>Addons>Find Updates) should work for forcing an add-on update though.
@Codex: You probably need a version of the iPod extension that’s compatible with 1.4.
The iPod extension is now Community-supported, so it’s not on the addons site, but you can get the addon associated with the release here: http://developer.songbirdnest.com/builds/Songbird1.4/1419/addons/
@jomaweb You can continue past this dialog box; it’s a warning, not an error.
@Andrew Luecke
Although I agree that some users, especially new users, may find the splash screen helpful in providing assurance that the program is loading, I myself would disable it, regardless of whether or not it has any effect on performance. More of a personal thing.
As far as the new feather goes, I must say I am very impressed. The new display pane toggle system is so much more intuitive, and the layout is alot cleaner. The one thing I am still not so sure about is the font, but even that is growing on me.
I was actually quite happy with the releases until the splash screen appeared….. speed is improved, little bugs are disappearing, its real nice. You guys have obviously been putting alot of work into the bird, it would just be nice to hear about it more often, which has been getting better.
@stevel
Thanks! That is a really great suggestion. Worked great.
@Stevel – I sent you the image a few minutes ago. Let me know if you do not receive it.
@stevel – I just did a little bit of research: Windows XP doesn’t come with Lucida Grande by default, so are your shipping Songbird with that font?
If so, it did not install in my fonts directory; maybe a bug?
If not, the only way I can determine to get the font is to have Safari for Windows installed as it is an Apple distributed font. Does your test WinXP system have Safari installed? I do not have Safari installed.
@Noah
Songbird will automatically fall back to a similar font within the same family. In that case it’s probably Lucida Sans if you have it installed. If not, then who knows what it’s falling back to
That’s something that can be adjusted though on our side of things.
@Mike M – Actually I talked it over a bit with our designer, and we concur… we’ve changed the “New Playlist” to “Create Playlist” and anchored it to the top of the Playlists node (as well as restyling the icon). Hopefully it should stand out more now?
“Get Album Artwork” does not seem to work with “File (Local file in folder search for artwork)” option under Options>Album Artwork, and crashes Songbird if you do not have any “Fetcher Priorities” selected.
@Robert – Nice catch, I’ve filed bug 19290 to track that. Hopefully we can nail it down in time for final.
Just downloaded the beta. I’m having the same glitch as I did in 1.2; when the taskbar is set to auto-hide, it will not pop up when cursored over. I’m running Windows XP SP3, Songbird 1.4.1b2.
Also, could we get a default black feather in time for release
YABS doesn’t work anymore…
Hmm I got YABS working for me although I had previously enabled the incompatible addons in the about:config menu. I still got a notice but it was under feathers.
Unfortunately the buttons and song status has been moved to the top in YABS in this release. Never mind….I noticed it there was an option to change this under the View menu.
When I insert cd, and navigate over to CD Rip, song bird crashes. It worked fine in previous BETA version.
If it helps, my OS is Windows XP.
@Jon.. You may wish to subscribe to: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15516
The target to get the bug fixed is next release though…
@stevel – I just noticed the change on SVN so came back to say thanks. The new icon and wording make its function much clearer, and having it anchored in place helps too.
@Preed I am using the latest build of the ipod add-on, and still no recognition, same with every other build of the ipod add on since 1.2. Everything I have tried has failed, it shows up as a mass storage device with absolutely no space (0.0gb out of 0.0gb), even when using only the ipod add on and disabling all others my ipod refuses to show up.
Also, the tags used within songbird aren’t compatible with windows shell (meaning windows explorer cannot read these tags or use the album artwork for thumbnails) Will this support be restored at any stage before release?
For some odd reason, it syncs my “Sad Beatles” playlist from iTunes… but not my “ENERGY” playlist.
Commendable work. A lot snappier. The Feather looks amazing and even Gonzo looks polished. Controls work a lot snapper and my add ons work again. Sweet.
MoreGonzo 1.3.0 is just released supporting both Gonzo (and Gonzo based feathers) and Purple Rain. Please let me know of any issues.
Have loved & used SongBird for ages and still do, but please please please remove the splash screen. If you can’t, at least remov any part of U2 from it!
I really like the idea of a splash screen but instead of the current one, I’d love to see a more neutral one better in line with the high-grade quality of the new default feathers. Why not one of those Koshi’s birds (to far or no to fart, that is the only question.. Okay, not to fart… at least on the splash screen) ?
And yes, I agree with Jason, displaying a specific band will likely hurt someone’s feelings (by the way, who is this U2 you are talking about?
)
I mean, no photo on the splash screen, just a nice drawing of K-bird…
Wow, so much faster for me! The search and browsing feels snappy with my 15,000+ track library, good work!
Not sure purple is my colour though – looks like a freak on my gnome desktop. Shame the System feather addon appears to have been abandoned too. Think it should be default. http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1541
Okay, just noticed this one…. On first run, Songbird should not recommend the Gracenote metadata lookup add-on in Linux/Mac where CD-Rip is not supported.
If you want to change the splash screen, here are a lot of nice pictures:
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Docs/Songbird_Illustration_Compendium
Just download the one you want, convert in in bmp, name it splash.bmp and put it in your Songbird install directory
My favorite is the “A Songbird Orange” one!
@forest – Thanks, and good point! We’ll take it off.
@memo – Great suggestion
@forest – actually I just realised we also use Gracenote for album art, and that is used across all three platforms… so we’ll keep it in since it’s a great source for artwork
thank you so much songbird team,
)
the device support works awesome, (similar to itunes
the only thing, I have to criticize is the search function:
In my opinion, it is very slow.
thx
Installer for linux can be found here: http://skyzim.com/songbird-1-4-1-beta-2-installer/
@memo: Too many good ones to choose! Someone should write an add-on that randomizes the splash.bmp after each startup using an image folder.
@memo: yes, the Songbird Orange is juicy (and even nicer by removing the “Get Satisfaction” words from the image)! That one is nice too, slightly resized:: http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/7430/f16760f813a84ec2ae54da8.png
@chris: +1
@stevel: wouldl you consider using plain Koshi’s artwork as default splashscreen? It’s a detail, but it’s the first contact with Songbird and it would really differentiate Songbird from other media players, by giving it a strong graphical identity, like the current website. More than the current splashscreen.
Splash screen -he is awful !
I understand the desire for the splash screen, but couldn’t stand the stock one. So I just made this one based on something in the illustration compendium. I hope you guys don’t mind, but I figure this is the type of thing these are posted for.
http://www.learnlink.emory.edu/~brweins/splash.bmp
Brett! That’s exactly how I imagined it should be. Great job! Hopefully something similar will be done with the default splash in the future.
… and for the more simplistic among us…
http://www.learnlink.emory.edu/~brweins/splash_alt.bmp
Just remember to get rid of the _alt when placing it in the Songbird folder in \Program Files.
The build link appears to be broken (well, the link isn’t, but the build isn’t there).
Aw….. the linux gstreamer bug needs some lovin
.
http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Articles/Builds/Nightly_Builds currently reports this nice exception:
Request URI:
http://localhost:8081/deki/pages/369/contents?dream.out.format=php&dream.in.host=wiki.songbirdnest.com&dream.in.scheme=http&dream.in.origin=78.102.201.214&mode=view
Server response:
Array
(
[exception] => Array
(
[message] => Object reference not set to an instance of an object
[source] => mindtouch.deki
[stacktrace] => Array
(
[frame] => Array
(
[0] => MindTouch.Deki.ExtensionBL.CreateEnvironment (MindTouch.Deki.PageBE page) [0x00000]
[1] => MindTouch.Deki.DekiXmlParser.ProcessEnvironment () [0x00000]
[2] => MindTouch.Deki.DekiXmlParser.ProcessScripts () [0x00000]
[3] => MindTouch.Deki.DekiXmlParser.ProcessPage (MindTouch.Deki.PageBE page, MindTouch.Dream.XDoc content, ParserMode mode, Boolean isInclude, MindTouch.Deki.PageBE basePage, MindTouch.Deki.Script.DekiScriptLiteral args, MindTouch.Deki.Title relToTitle, MindTouch.Dream.XDoc& tableOfContents, System.Boolean& hasScriptContent, System.Collections.Generic.List`1& outboundLinks, System.Collections.Generic.List`1& templates, System.Collections.Generic.List`1& tags) [0x00000]
[4] => MindTouch.Deki.DekiXmlParser.Parse (MindTouch.Deki.PageBE page, MindTouch.Dream.XDoc result, ParserMode mode, Boolean isInclude, MindTouch.Deki.Script.DekiScriptLiteral args, MindTouch.Deki.Title relToTitle) [0x00000]
[5] => MindTouch.Deki.DekiXmlParser.Parse (MindTouch.Deki.PageBE page, System.String contentType, System.String language, System.String content, ParserMode mode, Boolean isInclude, Int32 section, MindTouch.Deki.Script.DekiScriptLiteral args, MindTouch.Deki.Title relToTitle) [0x00000]
[6] => MindTouch.Deki.DekiWikiService+d__166.MoveNext () [0x00000]
[7] => MindTouch.Dream.Coroutine.Iterate (IEnumerator`1 coroutine, MindTouch.Tasking.TaskEnv env, System.Action`1 completion) [0x00000]
)
)
[type] => System.NullReferenceException
)
)
@Bernard, @Vlad – Thanks, our wiki borked itself. I’ve given it a swift kick in the arse and it seems to be back up now.
I think you can do a better work, taking advantage of empty spaces to result in a cleaner interface.
please
and fix the album art, it doesn´t appears in windows 7, pleaseee
This release is really great! but I’m missing the bookmarks in the left bar!
The whole menu seems to be gone and I can’t create my own new (internet) bookmarks…
is this intended or does this only appear on my end and works fine for anybody else as this problem doesn’t seem to be mentioned yet
@Nikolai
Try that addon: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1746
The bookmarks have been withdrawn from core Songbird actually. And are now available as a Add on.
@Robert ““Get Album Artwork” does not seem to work with “File (Local file in folder search for artwork)” option under Options>Album Artwork..”
@Robert “When I insert cd, and navigate over to CD Rip, song bird crashes. It worked fine in previous BETA version.
If it helps, my OS is Windows XP.”
I completely removed and reinstalled songbird, and both these problems seemed to have gone away. Sorry if I sent anyone on a wild goose chase.
By the way, CD rip wont accept only 1 input on the “CD Info” screen if the info isn’t found online. I cannot leave the artist space blank, which doesn’t work sometimes.
@ klint thanks for the infos…
@ Preed
Thanks for the link, I just downloaded 1.4.1 for Ubuntu Linux 64-bit. First thing I checked was iPod support and it seemed to have been broken. I downloaded and installed the ipod device support add-on from the site you gave and it all works now. So mad kudos to you. Thanks bro. I’ll try to put it out in the Ubuntu community in case someone runs into this program. Keep up the good work guys!
About the splash screen… I’m a mac user so I won’t see it and I’m hoping I won’t in the future.
Assuring the user that a program is loading is done by the OS, NOT the application itself, by putting an icon in the startbar/dock, making a dock icon bounce if launched from the dock in OS X and maybe some other stuff in windows that I don’t remember or haven’t noticed in new versions.
Anyway, a splash screen is just pure annoyance that’s:
1. keeping the user from seeing the other windows if the app launches slow.
2. drawing attention to the slowness.
@ Preed
iPod sync works, but for some reason when my playlists are copied over, only the first song of the playlist is visible on my iPod. The other thing is I’m getting crazy amounts of errors about transcoders. In all not all my songs are being copied over, but I did some tech research and it appears that a bug has been filed and not even looked at yet. Also someone in #songbird on IRC straight up said that ipod support is not developed in house. So with Songbirds ipod support broken, it just becomes another media player.
Anyhow I’m not trying to say anything bad against the developers. For me and I’m sure some other users having an app that supports ipods in Linux is the only thing keeping them from booting up windows. It really makes my day when I can stay on linux and not have to boot up windows xp just to sync my ipod. Then again this probably could all be avoided if I didn’t buy one in the first place. I think it’s time to look into buying something more Linux friendly.
please remove this splash screen. we get enough feminization from all the plastics we drink. no need for pics of sexy U2 guys in ski hats.