GeekShadow

This is awesome !
I was wondering (playing with Spotbird) if I can do something like this :p

GeekShadow

Can you do this as a media view and not a display pane ? it will be more usefull.
Also all artists are not listed after "and many more..."

yew

well, looks like there's a lot of work in this one.
cool idea. and i gave it a quick test:

being in the list pane dumbfounds the songbird. you should find a way to make it interact with the service pane too, i mean: when i select one of my playlists, the spotbird artist browser (will be adressed as SAB in the following) should react and show the songs in that playlist, or when i search for an artist, the SAB should show that artists page.

also as mentioned above, the artists in "and many more" doesn't show, and in my case, i can only see artists from A to C.

as its a full-feature display pane, (and i think its the only place you can put this) you kinda got yourself in big trouble :D the application looks promising, if you can integrate it into songbird very well, people can use it as the default display, without turning back to songbirds song list or whatever.

actually its an exciting idea, and you should be congratulated just for that. maybe we dont have to, and can have other ways of interaction with our music library, than the way Apple and iTunes accustomed us.

as i say, its a big job to be done. good luck with that =)

yew

also; when you click on an artist, it waits for the content from last fm to load, which is making it slow to see the song-list. maybe the page should load and the artist info and recommandations should load after that. (i dont know if this is operable with javascript) and for some not-well-known or local artists which dont have a last.fm page, just nothing happens (no page load, and the songs dont show too.)

yew

last thing: it doesn't work without internet connection. i should be able to show the song list on the computer even if you are not connected to the internet.

that's all i guess.

it looks like a lot of hardwork :S still its a great concept, but without those enchancements i mentioned, its pretty much useless.

good luck.

LIB53

I don't know anything really about spotify (I'm American, so i can't check it out), but the Album list is very impressive, and I'd like to see it turn into a media view.

lajevardi

good job!
but I need a narrower view to use it on sidebar.

topdownjimmy

This is a beautiful add-on. Really demonstrates the potential for innovative library views in Songbird. Thanks for your work on this.

GeekShadow

@andreas.f
I think it would be better as a media view ;)

MoarBewbs

This looks amazing! But I'm having 1 problem with it I'm afraid..
When I use it in the right sidebar, and put 1 column artist filter next to it (left), I can only use one of them and they're not synced.
When I use the sidebar first, I can't use the filter anymore (so I can't access all of my artists). If I use the filter first, I can't use the sideview anymore and doubleclicking an artist name in the filter doesn't do anything to the sideview, the artist info/albums doesn't show up ):
Oh and when i try to use it without the filter i can't access all my bands because when pressing the upper bar of the sideview it takes me to the artist overview, but i only goes as far as the D and then tells me there are many more band -.-

But still, I think it's one of the best plugins and I hope this will be a mediaview one day. Keep up the good work!

PS: I signed up just to tell you how great it is ^^

topdownjimmy

Been using this a little bit in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10, with Songbird 1.1.1b1.

Bugs:

• Scrollbar is taller than display pane if the pane is too narrow
• Display Pane title conflicts with Music Recommendations add-on
• Number next to each track doesn't reflect track number, just number in list.
• If Shuffle is activated, the songs shuffle, but the highlight just moves to the next song in the list. Same with Repeat One
• If Repeat All is activated, playback loops to the beginning, but the display pane reverts to the "All artists" view
• Links to artists with apostrophes in their name don't work in "All artists" view; work fine in similar artists lists
• I was able to get it so that the song reported in the control window (?) was incorrect, even if shuffle and repeat were off, and I was double-clicking songs in the display pane to start them. Can't reproduce at the moment.

Suggestions:

• Implement as Media View rather than Display Pane
• Allow selection of single or multiple songs for dragging into playlists
• Enable right-click menu on track titles (and album titles)
• Show rating, play count for each track, or provide display customization options to show other metadata
• Repeat single album / shuffle within album options
• Sort options: release year, album title, rating, play count, etc.
• Links to each album in that grey "Albums" bar, to jump down to any album below
• Query Last.fm similar artists until five are found that are in library to avoid blacked-out links
• Show total play count for artist (and for each album)
• Link to artist's tags, which can produce a list of all artists in one's library that share that tag
• In "All Artists" view, create artist cloud, varying size of artist name by number of songs in library
• Link artist names and album titles to their Last.fm pages in new tab
• If made into a Media View, create a supplementary display pane to show additional info on track/album/artist — for instance, so that the Similar Artists are always visible and don't disappear when you scroll down
• Maybe some form of caching so that common or recent artist views load more quickly

That's all I can think of for now. Thanks again for this wonderful add-on! Works great already and holds a lot of promise for the future.

moopet

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I have no idea how to make this work. It installs, but there are no options to set, and it's not an available display pane or pane button. It doesn't hook into the library, I can't get anything through context clicking all over the place and there are no enticing new buttons. Is there something wrong, or is there a way of making this addon start up that I haven't thought of (XPSP3, SP1.0.0/860)?

topdownjimmy

@moopet: It should appear in the Display Pane drop-down as "Music Recommendations."

Simon

Unfortunately, this Display Pane title conflicts with the Music Recommendations add-on.

Also, there a no scroll bars so I access only one screen full of my artists ( about letters (A to C!) = maybe some sort of alphhabetical picker could help.

carmenm

Who, i am really impressed by that plugin. So useful! Great Job!

A few thing i would like to see:
- Drag and drop of an album. For example when you drag the album title onto the "now playing list" sidbar it drags the whole album. The same feature for the artist would be even greater!

- a way to select a whole album, something like clicking on the coverart.

- A way to customize the columns. By the way i have a problem with the rows length. Even in fullscreen the rows have a fixed width and so i dont see the genre column entirely.

carmenm

Yes i mean selecting all the tracks. Could be so useful.

As for the columns width, i didnt know that, that s cool but that s not my problem. My problem is the row width which is fixed and does not depend on the window width like the top bar does.

One thing by the way, if i go into another tab and come back, i am back to the all artists view. Is it possible to remember your last position?

Thanks a lot for your quick answer

cros13

When I try to double click any track it always plays the first track in the current view (artist/album).

I can't seem to get it to behave!

carmenm

To add to cros13, when you double click on a track, you can see in the now playing list that all the tracks from the current library view (Not the artist browser) are added to the now playing list. Seems odd to me. Only the selected track should be added, or maybe the whole album would be better.

topdownjimmy

"Besides, I kind of like that you can get tips about artists you don't already have."

I can see your point here, Andreas, but that's something a person can get from Last.fm if they want to. When implemented as a view within a media player, in my opinion it makes more sense to keep results limited to what the user already has. Dark, unclickable text isn't very functional.

Maybe it could be an option?

MoarBewbs

I don't think it's supposed to look like this.. =/
Does anyone know how to fix this?

Great add-on otherwise, it looks great! I would really like to use it for my library

MoarBewbs

EDIT:

For full view: http://i39.tinypic.com/4qgzec.jpg

MoarBewbs

Never mind, turns out the mediaview only works when using the spotbird feather
Still not using it though, because selecting an artist takes way too long..

carmenm

OK, so i just downloaded the last version and it is just GREAT. You did an amazing job.
Now i have a little feature request and a bug i suppose:
- When listening to a track i dont see the album art in the album art display panel, and i am not sure why.

- quite related, in the artist browser, when showing an album, would it be possible to see the folder.jpg from the album dir, and if none present the one from lastfm? I ask that because sometimes there no albumart on lastfm or the quality is very poor.

Again thanks for your amazing work.

carmenm

Oh and i forgot could you keep the aspect ratio for the artist image?
Thanks

MoarBewbs

No, it's not the loading that takes a long time. I just think the method of selecting them isn't really effective. By this I mean the "By Artist" screen, where you just get all your artist (with the "and more ..." at the end)
I have a rather large library and the first page only goes as far as the B =/
And , for example, when I'm on the forth Artist page there's no "..." in the beginning to go to the previous page (this is only on the last page)
I would prefer a column on the left side (that's always there) with all your artists listed.
But I think you're trying to get the same look as the real Spotbird so that's probably not an option =/

But otherwise it's the best mediaview out there! =p Keep up the good work ^^

darkgaze

Hi there.

I would like to share an idea with you. I wanted to build up THE SAME thing you´ve done, but just the cd browser with the artwork and all. Just that, like in itunes.

I would like to know if it is possible to help you out, and build up my own addon (or doing it with you, together, if you like it), using your code to help. It was hard to search for help but with this add-on i see i could do it!!.

Could i? what should i do? is it open code, can you share it?

thanks!! Please let me know.

jurialmunkey

Needs vertical scroll bars!! I find that all the artist names do not fit in the window unless I have Songbird maximized and the mash-tape bottom pane minimized. A vertical scrollbar would fix this problem.

The other problem I noticed, is sometimes the artist pages take a while to come up. It seems like the pages do not render until all the information has been downloaded. It would be much better if the Albums and Tracks were displayed before the info is loaded (from last.fm I presume). If I'm downloading something, Spotbird simply becomes unusable as a media view.

If these two problems get fixed, then Spotbird will become my default media view.

felixg

Hey, great add-on! thanks!

It would be great if it worked with the normal songbird feather and if there were more "go back" links, like when you want to go back from one album to the artist. The artist list is nor really suitable for a large library... maybe you can change that, or even add some sort of album view =)

M3m0ry

This is a really awesome add-on that is useful as a media view. Only one thing is missing for me, it would be awesome if you could have an album rater underneath the album cover. Keep up the good work!

ferodom

When I installed this add-on the music recommendations format was disrupted. I tried re-installing the music recommendations, but that did not work...please fix at your convinience.

Great Add-on.

klint

Hello thanks for this excellent add on.
Some error in the Console though:

- for some artists, nothing displays when clicking on their name:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004003 (NS_ERROR_INVALID_POINTER) [nsIDOMXULElement.replaceChild]" nsresult: "0x80004003 (NS_ERROR_INVALID_POINTER)" location: "JS frame :: chrome://spotbird-artists/content/recommendations.js :: anonymous :: line 104" data: no]

- another error I have met:

Error: view.clear is not a function
Source File: chrome://spotbird-artists/content/recommendations.js
Line: 65

Thanks

ant

Great addon, however when I click any non-latin artist (cyrillic in my case) it just goes back to the first page. Also a delay when loading artist is a bit annoying. Maybe put a placeholder when artist info should be and begin loading it only after albums are shown?

bob202

I like this app, but there are a few bugs:

It doesn't add a scroll bar when I adjust the size of other panes, meaning I can't see all the artists. This also seems to affect the information displayed on the artist page, as I can't read all of the info, nor can I scroll to read more.

Also, it doesn't always go to the artist's page when I select it, but if I press the play button songbird will play a song by that artist.

A suggestion or two:

Intergrate with songbird's ability to select the song currently being played by clicking on it in the player bar so that by clicking on the song playing in the player bar it goes to the artist's page

Could you add a 'play all' ability I know this contradicts the general idea of how the app works, but I think this would make it the perfect way to browse through the library

Please keep up the awesome work!!

Rolle

I have a huge library so I got few problems. I have many Collection -albums, so it is really, really hard to find the artist I want to listen. Where is the search? It would be nice to be able to search like in real Spotify. Artist = Album Artist would also be really nice. This is not quite usable add on, but thanks anyway. Waiting for these updates.

bilinsky

Nice feature, but the artist image is always scaled as a rectangle (portrait), even though the image shows an album image.

bilinsky

When switching between spotbird view and filter pane the filter pane suddenly have 10 tabs instead of 3, strange?

dkordik

Here I am trying to recreate the Spotify interface in foobar2000 when you've already done the work for me in Songbird! Awesome add-on!

alad

What about this add-on? It's one of my favourite... awesome! But need to be update... please improve it (if you can).
Regards

klint

Hi Andreas
Excellent update, it's a perfect way to rediscover one's library.
 thanks a lot!

I just miss one thing: once you"ve dived into a artist, there is no way to go up to the lis of artists...Or maybe there is, but I haven't found it :)
Thanks

klint

I mean, like a "Back button"... Of course, one always can click on the Library node, but it's far way on the screen, and you loose the focus on the LETTER you had choses.

klint

And it works :) Silly I missed that!!
Thanks

klint

Andreas, can you please implement the same king of right-click options on a track than in the default library view?

Also, if you need a translation to French, just put your extension on Babelzilla and I will be glad to do it.

gargelfuh

well done! but this addon interferes with "Music Recommendation" destroying the presentation of the similar artist description. Hope this can be fixed as i use and like both addons...

Joenkkoe

Great thing you came back for this project!

There are a few things still bugging me:

• Since the rows have fixed width they will break with long song names
• When you view by year and go to some year, coming back will change the view back to by artist.
• Rating doesn't really work, or it doesn't show them right
• Would be great to view by genre

There are some other small things like you can't select song or edit it but it doesn't bother me that much.

Anyway I think this is by far the best add-on to songbird and I hope you continue with this project :)

verso

Hi andreas, thank you very much for this wonderful add-on!

I did notice the problem mentioned above. Ratings don't work the way you described: they don't appear on the artist page unless the first song of the album is rated; furthermore: Spotbird Artist Browser seems to attribute that same rating (pertaining to the first track) to all tracks found on that particular album.

Still one of the best media views, please keep up the good work!

verso

Great work, thanks a lot!

I did find one small problem that doesn't really qualify as a bug (a buggy, maybe?) but I'll mention it anyway. After switching from Spotbird Artist Browser to other media views (Filter Pane, List or Media Flow), two things happen: (1) the items now get filtered by year (ascending), and (2) the Track Number header appears. (I've seen similar behavior with other Media Views; it seem that these settings somehow affect the default ones. Do you see a way around this?)

Thanks again!
Regards

Surt

Great Work,

i can't show "All Artist", no with left click and no with right click.
Or i am wrong and is suppossed to works that way: By Artist Alphabetic or year, but not "all" artist alfabetically or ordered by year.

brunods

wow that's really cool.

Don't sweat about the code, I'm happy I could be of some help =)

good work, cheers.

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Hi! The last two updates was just wonderful! Thank you! :)

joelinho

Great work with this add-on! I have been trying a few different addons for Songbird but I think I will stick to this one. It is nice and clean, just the way I like it.

There is one thing I am missing though, and that is the possibility to list my music by album. Another tab for that would be great.

Keep up the good work, it is greatly appreciated.

mcomfi

Hi Andreas, I would want to translate this module to the Russian language. Please tell me your email, simply reply to mcomfim@gmail.com">my mail. Thanks, Marcis Gasuns.

Kryptt

Love this addon, and i thank you many times for it! :)

I got a small bug report though, it can't find Album covers for artists whit special characters in it. Like Dúné

Can you fix that`? :)

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Wow man! You're just simple awesome! :) This special character thing was my problem with this add-on and with Music Recommendations. But now both work well with Björk, Lesiëm etc. artists! Great!!! :) Thank you again!

verso

Thanks for the reply andreas. About my comment, there's a chance I was misunderstood: I was describing a problem that occurs after switching away from Spotbird Artist Browser to other media views, like Filter Pane, List or Media Flow.
For example: say I'm currently using List media view, and the only headers selected are album, artist, title, and bit rate (lets say I sort my tracks by artist). If I now switch to Spotbird Artist Browser and after that again select List view (in media views options or simply by clicking the back button), the List view now shows two additional headers (track number and year) and the items are sorted by year.
In case you understood me correctly the first time, I apologize for my lengthy reply:-)
Thanks again!

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Yes, I noticed that bug too, what Verso speak about. When I switch from Spotbird Artist Browser to (for example) Filter view track sorting change by year all the time even if thw sorting was by artist.

verso

@andreas.f

I understand, no problem, thanks again for your great work!

hubbubhum

the best way to search for music in Songbird !

moonsetsky

I love this skin, but I'm not able to click and drag tracks to my 'now playing' pane at the bottom?

moonsetsky

I love this skin, but I'm not able to click and drag tracks to my 'now playing' pane at the bottom?

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: There are two problems:
1st - If an album doesn't have album art. 'default-cover.png' image doesn't show up just a dark-grey one in #big-album-box, and an empty area in #one-album. Would be better to use 'default-cover.png' if you can.
2nd - If I select a year, #big-album-box window appears with albums from that year. On this window only Overview tab is visible, same like on #one-album window. But in this window the area next to Overview tab isn't click-able. Looks like the other tab still there just it's invisible and disable. Would be better to make it same like on #one-album.

Anyway... This media-view still one of the best!! :P

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Hi! I'm working on my new feather (Starcraft 2 -Zerg), but when I wanted to support Spotbird Artist Browser I found a problem. I set playlist-tree to transparent on #one-album (to make visible a big hydralisk image), but unfortunately there is a drag icon and text behind the tree.

It would be wonderful if you could hide the icon. Although I read on your #comment it's very difficult to hide. Any progress to solve this problem?

redxand

I have the most updated version of Spotbird,Songbird and the feather. The only problem I'm having is that I can't get the biography to show. The metadata on my library is fairly clean but I can't get the bio to show regardless of what view I have selected.

Other than that, this is the best library view on songbird. Great work!

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Thank you for this fast fixing. Cover area and second tab are fine now! :)

Default cover: I agree with your opinion about the default cover image, but I have a question. How can I overwrite the default cover image to use default-cover.png instead of your cover.png in my feather? I tried to overwrite your cover.png image but no success. :(

Drag icon: Yeah I know where is the drag icon image and yes, I can hide it and the drag badge as well. But the problem is if I hide them (as I as did now temporary), the drag feedback next to mouse cursor is disappears too.

Thanks again... :P

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: The new behavior of Soptbird Artist Browser when I switch away from it to an other media view (tracks are ordered by Artist) is OK. Thanks! But I have a problem: Track Number column disappears all the time after a switch! Every other column is remain except that one.

I tested this with other columns too. If I turn off Year and I take a switch it remains off, Bit Rate column as well. Or if I turn Year and Bit Rate on, after a switch they're remains on. Except Track Number column. It turns off after every switching.

Is this a bug? A little bit annoying. Sorry...

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Thanks the fixing! Great! :) :D

Default cover art image problem: I still can't overwrite the source of default cover image through css. Looks like you used xul for your grey cover.png image. Could you make it skinnable, please? ;)

cole.mickens

It would appear that the selection model is slightly broken from what Songbird expects. I would imagine clicking on a file and seeing it selected (not the case, you just have to double click to start it playing). Maybe as a result the 'bug' I'm seeing is exhibited:

The "now selected" area where it should show the album art fails to pull in the album art as it shows up in your Media View. It could be argued that it would be redundant, but it would be nice to have still.

Thanks! This media view really is the nicest one, way better than the stock and it has caught the attention of some people that maybe I'll be able to woo away from iTunes finally!

Enigma885

**A REQUEST**
- In coverart source, why don't u add an option to get the albumart from a local file named something like cover,folder,front?
(The only 2 options available are from Metadata and Lastfm)

Enigma885

**ANOTHER REQUEST**
- It's necessary to have an internal separate "back button" for Spotbird Artist Browser to get back to the main library or the grouped artists. Simply, because using the Songbird back button just takes the user entirely out of media view. Which is pretty disturbing.

kanej

I like this addon except it worked the first time I installed and now it just says loading... and nothing happens. is this a a bug?

toby

First: great addon, love it.
I'd like to second the request for a "Take me to the main page" button, as songbird seems to reload the media view and library database when i click on library which alway takes a few seconds.
Also, being able to drag songs into playlists from artist pages would be great.

SebbeSkoog

Great job here dude,sometimes in some albums the songs are twice in the playlist though, how can i fix it?

zacharrry

This media view is awesome but clicking "All Artists" doesn't seem to have any effect!

archanjil

I really like this! But for some reason, the size of all of the letters is too large for my screen. Maybe in preferences there can be adjust of font size something for them?

Also if anyone has any advice, thanks! I like this browser a lot.

MI3Guy

The Last.fm logo gets on my nerves. I am aware that it is required to use last.fm services, but I think it could be positioned better.

MI3Guy

OK, I just noticed this. When using Album Artist instead of Artist, if I go into various artists I get a separate album for each track. I assume this is because the artist tag is different, but couldn't it use Album Artist?

BR-Charles

Nice work, andreas!

Ndjee

Very nice add-on ! Is there an ability to localize the biography, like in mashTape ?

Enigma885

@andreas.f thanks for answering one question..still one :)
**A REQUEST**
- In coverart source, why don't u add an option to get the albumart from a local file named something like cover,folder,front?
(The only 2 options available are from Metadata and Lastfm)

Dida

I have the same problem kanej has, i installed the plugin but now it just says 'Loading...' all the time. I was really looking forward to this addon, based on the screenshots i saw.

I hope to be able to use it soon:)

Vashkin

I love this :D

EpicHenchman

this is an amazing add-on!! gratz :D its a great instinctive layout and one of the few that can view your music by album artists rather than song artists properly though i have a slight problem with it as it tends to mess up the song order of my "Various Artist" and "Soundtrack" albums with some separated into a separate album for each song as well as some just altering the order of the tracks even though the metadata is fine.

mtbc

Nice and informative post, keep up the good work.

EMR

mtbc

Nice and informative post, keep up the good work.

EMR

Hiromacu

@andreas.f: Bug report:
- Songbird knows the 'A', 'An, 'The' ordering method. So if an artist's name is for example The Cinematics, you find it in 'C' and you can index it with 'C'.
- But, Songbird also knows different languages' ordering method. For example Songbird knows the 'La' ordering. So if you have an artist like La Roux, you find it in 'R' instead of 'L' and you can index it by 'R'.

But this add-on knows only the basic English 'The' ordering even if Songird knows more. So I think this is a bug or just a missing feature.