All the Media View developer needs to do is create an icon file.  It must be 22×80, with all four 22×20 states (normal, hover, active, and disabled) vertically stacked in it.  Here’s a sample one I created for John M’s excellent Grid View:

All that’s left is to point to it inside the Media View’s install.rdf file.  In the same <songbird:mediaPage> section we simply define a new <songbird:contentIcon> value, like so:

<songbird:mediaPage>
   <Description>
        <songbird:contentIcon>chrome://gridview/skin/mpIcon.png</songbird:contentIcon>
        <songbird:contentTitle>Grid View</songbird:contentTitle>
        <songbird:contentUrl>chrome://gridview/content/media-page.xul</songbird:contentUrl>
    </Description>
</songbird:mediaPage>

That’s all there is to it!

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!!

Download Songbird 0.5rc1 (release notes)

For all the Windows users out there, we have a shiny new treat, MTP Device Support! Most portable media players and cell phones integrate the MTP spec so try plugging in your device and share your findings on the MTP Device Compatibility Wiki Page. FYI – the extension requires Windows XP-SP2 or Vista, as well as WMP v11.

Songbird 0.5 includes a new Device API that allows developers to easily add device support to Songbird. Our new MTP support is built on it, and we are in the process of porting our iPod Device Support extension to it. In the interim you may notice some issues with iPod support.

This release also introduces the ability for developers to create alternate graphical presentations for Libraries and playlists, called Media Views. Mig created an example Media View called the Artist Detail List which can be installed from the Add-on Site.

Add-on developers – Now would be a good time to make sure that your add-on is compatible with 0.5.

As always, please file any issues, bugs, or crashes you find in Bugzilla so that we can address them before 0.5 final makes it out the door.

Here are some additional resources for developers:

• API Changes Since 0.4
• Getting started with Media Pages
• How to update 0.4 Feathers to 0.5
• Full list of bugs fixed (200+)