Songbird, the new competitor to MM?

margu · Post by **margu** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:00 am

Hello fellows,

as some of you have already realised, there is a (maybe?) new competitor to MM named Songbird.

It's a Open-Source project based on Firefox' rendering engine Gecko and its skinning engine, coming as a hybrid of webbrowser/mediaplayer in a black iTunes like outfit.

After I've taken a look at it I've to say that it looks very interesting. Not that it can make me switch to it, because I love MM and am a livetime user of it. But Songbird could be a real competitor after it is finished and all coming features are integrated.

What do you think about it?

Greatings
..::M::..

Post by **Lowlander** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 2:21 pm

Songbird looks promising, but too much of an iTunes copy (interface) to me.

Don't forget that it's version 0.1 and that the developers state that the application still has some serious bugs (mem leakage).

gtbuzz · Post by **gtbuzz** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 2:23 pm

I'm surprised this is the first mention of Songbird. Seems to be a good idea in that it is written on Gecko. Primarily because there is a solid basis to write plugins and themes. The big advantage it has on MM is that since it's Gecko it's cross platform. MM has a huge development lead on Songbird with numerous features that are way out on Songbird.

The biggest difference I see is the markets the 2 are shooting for. MM is a music media manager, and IMHO is the best at that job. I handles most of iTunes music management and mp3 player functionality (minus AAC and Podcasting). Songbird appears to be trying to recreate iTunes as open source and to allow for plugging in other music services to purchase within the app besides iTunes store. That doesn't appear to be MM's primary function.

Competition is never a bad thing and I love to see new blood and new ideas in the arena. A plugin manager (like Firefox/Thunderbird) in MM would be an incredible improvement over editing the Scripts.ini file. I'm excited to see what Songbird does as it continues to grow.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:33 pm

gtbuzz wrote:A plugin manager (like Firefox/Thunderbird) in MM would be an incredible improvement over editing the Scripts.ini file. I'm excited to see what Songbird does as it continues to grow.

This is a great idea, you should post it in the wishlist forum... to go along with the script.ini management, it would be even cooler to be able to dynamically load/unload/reload the scripts without having to restart monkey..

Steegy · Post by **Steegy** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:45 pm

A plugin manager (like Firefox/Thunderbird) in MM would be an incredible improvement over editing the Scripts.ini file. I'm excited to see what Songbird does as it continues to grow.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this too, so I'm certainly backing this.
In that way, there could be an online database with scripts in a "starndardized" way so people can search/browse a script from that script/plugin manager and let it automatically be installed.
This would enable easy install and update for scripts (and plugins) people want: and no more searching through the scripts forum for "normal" people

.

BTW: The Gecko engine is just a "firefoxy" way to show web pages. This really isn't a special feature (in my opinion), and it can easily be added next to the default Internet Explorer rendering engine (which is faster and less picky

)
But what about the "firefox skinning engine"? Can someone provide a link to that (open source ?) project? If it's open source, would that mean that MM can use it too?

ADDITION: In my opinion, more good skins for MediaMonkey would also boost it's success, together with famous features like better auto-lookup for tags/album art, album-art browsing, ...

Cheers
Steegy

trixmoto · Post by **trixmoto** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:58 pm

I am currently working on a project with Peke that will provide a GUI for editing the Scripts.ini file. I have some ideas for how it will browse for scripts and automatically download them. It is in very early stages though, so no promises!

gtbuzz · Post by **gtbuzz** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 4:18 pm

Steegy wrote:
But what about the "firefox skinning engine"? Can someone provide a link to that (open source ?) project? If it's open source, would that mean that MM can use it too?

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the GUI is all done with the Gecko Engine using a XML language called XUL. Then if you want to skin anything you just overlay the XUL objects with custom skins. Firefox themes are just specialized plugins. So just like any function can be overwritten any piece of the GUI can also be overwritten. The cool part of XUL is that websites can also use it and it appears as a rich client inside the page. See XULPlanet for more info.

BTW...that "less picky" should read "less standard compliant"

Steegy · Post by **Steegy** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 5:05 pm

@Trixmoto (& Peke)

Do you plan to use a php/asp/... script database for this?

I mean, as I would make a scripts/plugin manager, it would query a php page that searches a (mysql) database with the scripts. A php page would enable "validated" script coders to upload their (updated) scripts and add/change an entry to the central script database (with name, version, date/time, description, author, category, keywords, ...).
I hope you understand what I mean...

BTW: To enhance my c#.net coding, and to facilitate scripts.ini handling a bit, I made my own MM Scripts Manager some time ago. I made it for my own, and is just a GUI for the Autoscripts and the Scripts.ini file and scripts. It is for "more advanced" users.
I hope what you guys are making will be better...
(That's the reason why you see some extra "property" entries in my scripts)

Link: http://home.scarlet.be/ruben.castelein/ ... anager.exe
Screenshots:
http://home.scarlet.be/ruben.castelein/ ... eneral.gif
http://home.scarlet.be/ruben.castelein/ ... Demand.gif
http://home.scarlet.be/ruben.castelein/ ... oStart.gif

Cheers
Steegy

Post by **Peke** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:15 pm

Search forum for my old MediaMonkey Script Customizer it is similar based appon it, Hopefully we will make some sort of CVS or SVN so that several developers can enhance that APP.

PHP<->MySQL, Framework can be done And I have some code made by myself althru no testing server and it is only personal

wallstreetwalker · Post by **wallstreetwalker** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:43 am

it looks nice (just installed and tried),
but it's really big and it took pretty long to load just 16 songs.

and it's speed that i need

but competition will only make things better i guess

i'll keep an eye on this soft

Post by **Lowlander** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:40 pm

As they mention in their release its a preview release. Not something that actually works very well. Speed is one of the problems mentioned.

tarasis · Post by **tarasis** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 6:21 pm

Lowlander wrote:As they mention in their release its a preview release. Not something that actually works very well. Speed is one of the problems mentioned.

Mmm, they did indeed. It took a scarely long time to deal with ~17000 tracks. I won't be repeating that experiment again until they are MUCH further along with development / optimization.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:21 pm

can you sync into ipod with it?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 10:47 am

For anyone interested (who doesn't know), the latest beta has been released. View details here:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/So ... 39446766/1

psyXonova · Post by **psyXonova** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 3:01 pm

Steegy wrote: BTW: To enhance my c#.net coding, and to facilitate scripts.ini handling a bit, I made my own MM Scripts Manager some time ago. I made it for my own, and is just a GUI for the Autoscripts and the Scripts.ini file and scripts. It is for "more advanced" users.

TSSSS, i cant believe you have been "hiding" something like this...
Great work, although for advanced users, its much better than editing that ini file.

Thanks Steegy

PS. I propose to create a new thread for this baby...