SillyDog701

[DJGM]

The first preview release (v0.1) of Songbird has been released. It's an open source music player with a
user interface not dissimilar to that of iTunes, written in XUL, and the Mozilla Gecko browser engine.

According to the welcome message when you first open the app . . .

Songbird is a media browser and Web player built from Firefox's browser engine.
Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and
supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions.

This is a preview release, a proof-of-concept, so there are many things still
missing. We will have a full-featured version this summer. Sign-up for
updates at Songbirdnest.com. See the Release Notes for
what's working and our known bugs.

A couple of screengrabs . . .





More information and download here . . .

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060206 Songbird/0.1

[Pu7o]

I'll consider trying it once they get rid of the black theme. Black doesn't mix well with Windows or OS X.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060114 Firefox/1.5.0.1 Firescape/0.2b1 wml/1.3

[Al]

What about Garage Band?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

[Andrew T.]

How very...weird!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060206 Songbird/0.1

[DJGM]

A few days short of 8 months after the 0.1 release of Songbird, version 0.2 is now ready for public consumption.
And along with the default black look from 0.1, there's now a white theme that should look better in Mac OS X.

The theme is changeable via --- File - Feathers - Dove ... the black theme (or Feathers) is called Rubberducky!





So far, the audio engine seems much better. It was jumpy as hell in 0.1, with what I refer to as digital hiccups!

Songbird 0.2 is still considered alpha quality, but I'd say it's definitely well worth a try.

More information and download here . . .

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-EN; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060925 Songbird/0.2(dev)

[richard mitnick]

I have installed 0.4 on one of my computers.

It does fine with my mp3 library, but it does a very poor job with audio streams. It seems only to be successful with .mp3 files. On my computer, it won't play mp3 streams that come in .pls from Shoutcast. It won't play any WMP file formats, or Real Audio formats.

I am not sure where these folks think they are going with this.

Mozilla had the advantage of a fat, dumb, and happy target in IE6. In a roundabout way, Mozilla got us IE7.

There is no similar target in media players. Winamp and Real Player are both feature complete and top notch.

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11

[Fulvio]

Version 0.7 is out, and the bird is still very clumsy. And, incredibly slow. It takes 60MB of memory, before it shows up (a number of minutes). Add-ons indicate that they will installed when Songbird is restarted, but I get the same message after restarting.
It habeen playing .mp3 and m4a files (may be m4p from iTunes), and a few Windows Media files.
It happens that I got a survey when I started, so, they are getting my feedback.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.17) Gecko/20080829 Firefox/2.0.0.17

[richard mitnick]

Fulvio-

You are a glutton for punishment.

Where are these guys going in this crowded field, with WMP, Real, Winamp, and iTunes?

>>RSM

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091620 Firefox/3.0.2 ImageShackToolbar/5.0.0

[DJGM]

I think maybe this thread should have its Sticky status removed, especially since Songbird is now upto v1.2.x.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.22) Gecko/20090605 SeaMonkey/1.1.17 Firefox/3.x