Songbird Media Browser
By Robert Safuto on Jul 6, 2007 in Tour
This is a video tour of the Songbird media browser. Songbird is an open source tool built on the Mozilla platform that allows you to manage all of the audio and video on your desktop. Songbird also functions as a web browser that allows you to easily identify, stream and download audio or video from web pages.
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erik | Jul 8, 2007 | Reply
Very useful. Thanks!!
Koshi | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
This is the best screencast that I’ve seen for Songbird! Much thanks from the nest. We’re so busy working on the bird that we haven’t been able to update our screencast. Here’s a couple more things for you to play with:
* While you’re playing a track, we suggest search terms from the track in the search menupop.
* Collapsing panes. Try dragging the splitter between the bookmarks pane and the browser all the way to the left. You can also do this in your Library to collapse the filterlists away. We call these smart-splitters and there’s one more between the media control bar and the browser (drag it upward).
* A handy way to make new playlists is by using the button at the bottom of the bookmarks. If you click and hold, you can make different types. We use click-hold buttons to pop useful menus where necessary.
* Switch feathers. In 0.3 we’re releasing a handy wizard for featherers to customize their Songbird’s CSS and images.
Clarification on a couple of items:
* The Web Library is actually the media items that Songbird can see within the scope of the pages you’ve visited. The items in the Web Library are subject to change as those items may change on the web. We are working on this particular feature to be included in a rich history view, for both web browsing and media playback.
* The Web Playlist is the last set of media items that the browser saw. We will eventually remove the Web Playlist (and most likely the Web Library), but for now, it’s important for our early developers to understand how remote tracks are managed within our system.
Otherwise, I’m glad you like our preview. We’re nearing our 0.3 and the release of our Web API. The Web API will allow a web page to make calls directly into Songbird without an addon. This will allow media sites to do things like, make recommendations, make playlists, and auto-download media all directly in Songbird.
Robert Safuto | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
Thanks back to Koshi and the Songbird team. Having this browser has ignited my interest in lots of media that had been laying fallow on external hard drives. Its also given me a new center for discovering and managing media driven websites.