---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Songbird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 11:28 PM Subject: Songbird 1.0 is Released!
Songbird 1.0 is Released! Download Songbird 1.0 We set out to build an open, customizable music player. Today, we're launching with dozens of integrated services, hundreds of add-ons, and a growing developer community. We'll be the first to admit that there's plenty left to do. And, while we're not ready for everyone, 160k users a month are expressing their vote for an alternative music player. New Features GStreamer We now use GStreamer as our main media playback system, across all platforms - giving us higher performance, better reliability, and a platform for much more media-related functionality in the future. Improved mashTape When you listen to music in Songbird you'll have the option to see Flickr photos, YouTube videos, last.fm biographies, google news (and more) for the currently playing artist. Improved Album Art Support The album artwork feature now supports drag and drop of images, as well as, toggling between Now Playing and Currently Selected tracks. Complete Keyboard Shortcuts We've cleaned up our Keyboard Shortcuts this release (and added some new ones for power users). Updated Linux Installer We've created a single archive that has all the necessary dependencies so that Linux users can run Songbird without having to install any additional dependencies. Re-usable Smart Playlists By popular request we've implemented the ability to use a smart playlist as a rule within another smart playlist. Reveal Original Files We've added the ability to expose the media items in Songbird as files in your filesystem by right clicking and choosing "Show File". Recommended Add-ons Updater A new update mechanism ensures that all upgraded users have an option to install the latest Recommended Add-ons. Hide & Show Display Panes We were inspired by Atrieu's Pane Button add-on and decided to add a few buttons to allow you to toggle between showing & hiding Display panes. Simpler Column Headings We've refined the column heading property list and made it easier to enable the properties you care about. Performance Enhancements We made some substantial gains this release: Drastically Faster Search: Searching in Songbird is now anywhere from 10x faster for small libraries to 1000x for large ones. Reduced RAM Usage: There's a 70% reduction in RAM usage when importing and using large (100,000 track) libraries. Faster Media Importing: Importing media into Songbird is now 2-4x faster. Reduced Startup Times: Large library users (10,000 tracks or more) will notice that Songbird startup times are now twice as fast. Efficient Scrolling: Scrolling through your library now uses half the amount of CPU. Snappier Sorting: Sorting your library is now 3-4x faster, which adds up to significantly smoother browsing when scrolling and filtering. Optimized DB Size: We've optimized the database in Songbird and reduced its size by, on average, 60%. This leads to a variety of performance improvements throughout the application. Fewer Crashers: We've worked hard to identify and fix 11 of the most common crashes in Songbird. For Developers We've created a simple guide for updating 0.7.0 Feathers to be 1.0 compatible. For extension developers, we've created a similar guide for updating extensions to be 1.0 compatible. We updated the Media Core APIs to take advantage of GStreamer. This allows for more power and flexibility in controlling playback. We've documented how developers can add support for additional playback formats by packaging GStreamer plugins as Songbird add-ons. Early Feedback on 1.0 "Songbird is improving at a rapid pace" - Ryan Pau - Ars Technica "the program runs and feels faster" - Seth Rosenblatt - CNET "[Songbird] has much to offer and is an improvement over the betas we looked at earlier" - Scott Gilbertson - webmonkey "We are very excited about our parternship with Songbird because it integrates a rich deskop media player with our database of concerts and tickets. While listening to my music library, I can see when my bands are on tour. The integration was painless and an example of the open and extensible platform Songbird have built." - Ian Hogarth, Founder & CEO of Songkick concert ticketing service "Songbird brings the limitless, often fan-created context of the Web to your desktop media player, and put media playing innovation in the hands of any web developer." - Ian Rogers, Topspin Media and Former GM, Yahoo Music What's Next Our goal is to continue to focus on building a world-class, open music player. Our next release will consist of continued focus on performance and stability gains, implementing additional audio features on top of GStreamer, and much more. Stay tuned to the blog to keep up to date, or if you like to live dangerously check out one of our nightly builds and see the progress for yourself! ____________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
