AlbumApplet Dark_Wolf
Let's the user browse his library by album cover, and download news one
DISCONTINUED
With the release of spidermonkey, which will presumably hit Songbird soon, the speed advantage from using a java applet will no longer be significant, and the loading time of the mediaflow extension is far faster than what can currently be achieved through an applet. This, combined with cross-platform compatibillity issues and the hackery needed to make java and songbird talk together in the first place, has made me pull the plug.
The source code can be found by downloading and unzipping the xpi file, in case anyone wishes to use it.
-Dark_Wolf
Well.....what -would- you like then? ;) I'm deffinetly doing requests if it's not unmanagable. Apple-itunes and media player are the inspirations here, but if someone has better ideas then that's cool too. I'm not a designer, just a programmer, and usabillity is hardly what I'm best at.
Sweet! You should make it download an album image from somewhere online if the image doesn't already exist on the HD.
Previous applications I have used (Amarok, Quod Libet, Exaile) save downloaded album covers as .folder.jpg folder.jpg or else some arbitray name. Would you consider making the plugin look for the Folder.jpg album-artist.jpg as you have currently, then look for the likes of .folder and finally, if nothing found, settle on the first .jpg it finds in the folder? It will more than likely find the right thing then and save renaming thousands of files. Keep up the good work, and please consider my suggestion :)
I have java 1.5 and Java 6 installed but the plugin doesn't run unfortunately.
What OS are you running?
Actually, make that "What OS are you running, did the 0.2.1 fix your problem and what are your language settings and the name of the library where the folder.jpg is stored?" It should be case independent, so folder.jpg and Folder.jpg should amount ot the same thing (at least it does on the windows platform).
I'm running Ubuntu Linux 7.04. I upgraded to 0.2.1 just now and I can't view my library anymore unless I disable the plugin. The path to the cover is /mnt/Disk/Audio/Red Hot Chili Peppers - Discography/By the Way/Folder.jpg
I've installed the latest version and I am having trouble with the resizing feature. I can make it as large as the window pretty much but if I try to shrink to less than about 50% of the window it disappears completely. I'd like to see the art but I don't want it taking so much of my screen real estate.
I'm gonna instll Ubuntu (or LiveCD it anyway) to see if I cn find what's causing your problem Jarlath. GruvyPunk, wht OS are you running? Here it doesn't collapse till the last 10 pixels or so, so I'm kinda curious to wht might be casuing your problem. Also your screen resolution might be of help :)
Thanks a lot Dark Wolf.
I was unable to reproduce either of the faults in ubuntu, but I think I found a fix for your problem Gruvypunk, by setting the min-height to 10 pixels. Ok, so the reason why I was unable to reproduce your error Jarlath is probably 'cos I wsn't ble to install java on a live-cd ubuntu, so my extension didn't work at all. Any chance I could get you to enable the java console and see if it throws any exceptions? Maybe check the songbird errorconsole for errors? You're welcome to email or MSN me at davidchansen at hotmail.com
Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that. My OS is Windows XP x64 version. My screen resolution is 1920x1200.
i'm running ubuntu 7.04 64-bit and when i have the plugin enabled the browser itself is entirely white. : / i assume this is what happens where java isn't installed, however i do have it installed.
Nope, it should display a black screen regardless of wether it loaded the applet or not. This would probably indicate that it hasn't loaded the applet page at all. Are there any errors in songbirds error console?
nope. i can't access web pages or my library or anything, the browser window is just white.
There's a recently discovered bug where it refuses to work if you're using the wikipedia extension. This will be fixed with the next release, presumably tomorrow.
Good Work, in my computer it works well (Windows Vista Home Premium)
I am having trouble with it even without the Wiki extension. (I did have the Wiki extension installed, but I uninstalled it, and it still doesn't work.) The error is a white screen where the library / birdhouse / etc. frame would normally be, and a red 'X' on a piece of paper icon in the upper-left-hand corner of the frame. Disabling the AlbumArt extension restores normal functionality. Running Songbird 0.2.5 on OSX 10.4.10 with all current updates. Songbird is running with the following extensions: Adblock Plus Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper AlbumApplet DOM Inspector HYPE Machine site iTunes library importer MozCC Quicktime Playback Songbird iPod Device Support Taglib metadata handler Tools Menu Addons 2 I haven't tested it thoroughly by uninstalling each add-on yet, but I thought you should be aware that an existing installation of the Wiki extension is not the only time this symptom presents itself. Perhaps the adblock extension might pose a problem as well? Thanks, mattcelt
Hmmm, ok, I feel stupid. Turns out the AlbumArt frame showed up atop the other frame, all I had to do was click and drag it and both frames are sharing space now. (It might be good to mention that for us dummies... ;-) But interestingly, I'm still not getting any art - just a white frame with the red 'X', like it's not downloading as it should. Is there a setting I should change? Thanks! mattcelt
Mattcelt, really sorry for not answering before, I was on vacation and honestly forgot to check if anyone had posted anything here. I think Adblock might be your problem, as it's probably blocking the applet the whole thing needs. Does it show any errors in the errorlog?
You might want to tell people this only works in 0.3?
mm...it does say that.... under "Warning"....
I seem to be a little confused. I downloaded the latest Win32 installer of the July 31 build of Songbird and installed it then I installed the latest version of AlbumApplet. it says the extension is installed but I don't seem it anywhere in the GUI. I'm not sure where it should be displayed of if I have to enable it somewhere else to get it to show up?
I am currently having some problems, i run Ubuntu Feisty (7.04), when i have java installed and i got the "all good" in their website from firefox. However when i start Songbird it doest load the applet. The error console doesn't show anything. Don't know what to do next. In a more suggestive theme may I say that it would be cool if you could get the artwork from the ID3v2 tag.
I am having the same problem as Flesher... I have installed the plugin in 0.3PRE version of Songbird, but can't find the plugin ANYWHERE???!!!! Any ideas how to make this work or what I may be doing wrong. BTW: I have the latest version of JAVA, I am running Windows XP SP2 32-bit, and have DOM Inspector and Play Notify installed.
I have found some messages in my logs: Failed to load XPCOM component: C:Documents and SettingsmackintdApplication DataSongbirdProfilesvrdahu1w.defaultextensions{BA1988EA-0482-4b09-B178-E44C55D2BA4F}componentslibalbumJavacomamazonxmlAWSECommerceService\_ItemLookupResponse.java Failed to load XPCOM component: C:Documents and SettingsmackintdApplication DataSongbirdProfilesvrdahu1w.defaultextensions{BA1988EA-0482-4b09-B178-E44C55D2BA4F}componentslibalbumJavacomamazonxmlAWSECommerceService\_Items.java and it keeps going for EVERY element until it gets to: Failed to load XPCOM component: C:Documents and SettingsmackintdApplication DataSongbirdProfilesvrdahu1w.defaultextensions{BA1988EA-0482-4b09-B178-E44C55D2BA4F}componentslibalbumJavaStackLayout.java I also have the following error appear: Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIStringBundle.GetStringFromName]" nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)" location: "JS frame :: XStringBundle :: getString :: line 17" data: no] Is this of any use??
I've just installed the latest Blessed Nightly on Windows, hoping that it would now be possible to have a stable build. Unfortunately, although the build itself seems stable, all I need to do is install this add-on and Songbird will, without fail, crash soon after startup. In fact, it crashes just at the point that the applet draws the gradient background.
The same thing happens to me, Lazlo. Once I access the library (using the latest nightly build), the plugin attempts to load, draws the black gradient, and then the program crashes.
I now have the latest BLESSED nightly build, and the plugin works!! Until it draws the gradient background and then songbird crashes :(( Any ideas?? ANYONE!?
Sorry for the long time responding guys. The applet crashes songbird these days, and there's nothing I can do about it I'm afraid, though I'll try to think of a bypass. For those of you having other problems with the add on (for instance those of you running the 0.2.5 songbird), please post the bugs at http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3854 and I'll try and look at them. Much much easier for me, and I get an email notification every time ;) As for getting art from the ID3 tags, it's on my todo list, after getting the extension to not crash songbird :p
This plugin is becoming a must for me, now I only need the ID3 function to work, because the Amazon thingy doesn't work for me. And in a further stage an option to change the size of the text or simply hide it. Edit: And it would be neat if u clicked on an album in the library panel your album slides into the window.
The id3 tag thingy tunred out to be somewhat more complicated than I expected. Once a decent java library has been found that can handle images in id3 tags (and hopefully also in mp4, wma and ogg files) I'll be happy to add this feature. Until then I'm afraid it's not gonna happen.
It works for me now, but it doesn't go to the album containing the song that I have playing. Whenever I play a song it should skip to that album pic so I can see that album.
You've got nothing to worry about with ogg files, because you cannot tag them with album art.
Hi- really great add-on! I've only recently discovered how great it is to have album art, so to have it available with songbird is excellent. I have a few suggestions, which you can take or leave or shoot down at will: (1) What if the covers that were displayed corresponded to the selected fields in the library view? For instance if I have a particular genre selected, and 'all' for artists and albums, then it displays all the albums from that genre... or if I have a particular artist selected, it shows only the albums of that artist? Even simply restricting to genre would be great. Something like this would make good sense because as things currently are, if my library is restricted to, say the 'rock' genre, and I double-click a cover from the 'jazz' genre, then the relevant album does not appear in the library because it's outside the range. (2) Could the cover display have an iTunes-type slider to navigate through the covers more quickly? (3) Could the covers be displayed bigger? Or a zoom slider? Anyway, just a few thoughts. Thanks.
A slider has been provided. What is this iTunes you speak of? This slider has been sponsored by the guys at the Aerith project. Synchronizing the standard library better with the albumapplet is being worked on, but I'm not quite sure it's possible. I'll try though. Bigger pics might be on the way. At least a way to better handle dynamic resizing. Ohh, and album skipping!
I guys, I'm running Mac OS 10.4.10 with the latest Java installed and nothing happen after I installed this extension (wich seems to be really great). Do I have to do something to make it works? I'm am using Songbird 0.3rc2. Do it work for someone on a Mac? Thank's
As it's all java and javascript it should run on pretty much everything, including coffee machines and Macs. Fairly sure I've heard someone with a mac using it... First of all, stuff only happens when you're on the library page. Are you sure songbird knows about the java too? Can you see java applet through songbirds? If the java isn't working, a big white box should be appearing on the library page. Otherwise, please make a bug in bugzilla and add davidchansen@hotmail.com to the cc list. Much easier for me to keep track of what's happening then, and the devs might be able to throw in a word or two as well.
I am running Ubuntu gutsy 7.10 and performed sudo sed -i 's/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g' /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so to get java to work with x11-xcb & compiz. However, in the java console i am getting the error Error: java is not defined Source File: chrome://albumapplet/content/albumart.js Line: 383 Any help is much appreciated!
Oh never mind, just discovered the easiest fix ever, just copied everything from /usr/lib/mozilla to Songbird's plugin folder!
i getting the same issue as Mattcelt on linux (ubuntu GG), the error console says theres an error with lines , 65, 190, 97, and 125. um let me know how i can be more of use
Hi I'm relatively new to songbird. I was wondering is it possible that the album art could be shown on the faceplate too.
One hitch is that Java 1.6 isn't available on Macs yet; so if this requires 1.6 (any way to make it work with 1.5 at all?), then I think Mac users are outta luck for now.
Nice job dude, however, can you change it so it will display the tracks in the album when an album is clicked on (right now it takes 2 clicks), and then have it automatically play the album on a double click? I think that that would be a little more user friendly.
Hi, I have Songbird 0.3.1 on ubuntu 64bit. I just can't see the Albumcovers, or anything from the plugin. Do I need to do something additional?
So I'll wait until Java 1.6 is out for us. Thanks for yours answers guys!
Yes, you MUST HAVE JAVA 1.6 installed in Songbird. Won't work otherwise. A Mac version using java 1.5 will be out in a couple of days, though it won't be looking as nice as the regurlar one, since a lot of the graphic-effects I use are aren't available n Mac till Apple get off their behind and fixes java. The addon cannot currently be moved away from the library page, but I'm told the songbird guys have something in mind which will remedy this. As for clicking to make it play...well.. I'll try, but it won't be in the next release (which is comming as soon as bugtesting has finished)., and I'm not sure if it's possible at all.
Ah well. Its still pretty good. I agree with what mharter said about how you should click on the albums to view songs and double click to play. I think that songbird should have buttons so as to select how you want to view your music e.g. by album, by song etc. Like in media player. this could mean that you could come with a song view with cover art Looking forward to the next version.
i can't get this to work. How do I use it? What do I click on? As far as I can tell, intsalling did absolutely nothing to my Songbird. I'm running Mac OS X, by the way.
Should work with the new updated version of the addon :)
great addon! It's another reason to forget Windows Media Player.
hi beatifull add-on, it found a lot of the albun covers of my music some questions: 1. are these images stored anywhere? 2. i wanna have my 5G IPOD with all these images, but when i try to syncronise it whit itunes i doesnt have the images!!!! exceletent job keep the good work and please try to answer my quest :)
i forgot something the albums move really nice and with right click i can see the songlist and the album cover very nice BUT how do i make it play that album or song ????? i tried with a lot of left and right click's and enter's and spaces but nope it never started playing the song or the album. tanx
Great looking plugin, it moves to the correct cover whenever I start playing a song. Will be WAY better than crappy Windows Media Player library when it's done:) A nice addition would be add the function to whenever we click on a cover album. But if it's not possible, wouldn't be possible to integrate the whole library into it and eliminate the need for a list like library at all? What I mean is the cover albums sorted by name/year and then when we click on one of them a list would appear where we could select/add to playlist/play the song on that album.. That would eliminate the need for an old-style list-like library, for browsing at least and would be way cooler that any other players library:) I know this is a bit far-fetched, and the programming for it isn't nothing but trivial, but it would be nice having a nice looking player like that. Keep up the good job!
The images are stored in the same folder as the music files for that particular album. If you're using mp3s you can have it embed the images into the files, which should allow itunes to use them.... I hope :) Other formats are out of luck till I find a fairly consistent framework to allow reading/writing of tags.
As of 0.3.6: Double click on the album :)
I've been thinking about replacing the library completely for some time, however as you say it's a lot of work, and RL stuff (such as say.. learning a new programming language and using it to find the energy levels of an atomic nucleus) means I'll try to keep the updates in chuncks I can manage.
This is pretty neat. I switched to Linux from Windows about two months ago and the only application I miss is iTunes. Songbird looks like it's coming along in such manner that I won't miss it at all. This plugin looks great. I'd love to try it out. I've got the latest version of Java running and the plugin would seem to be installed correctly, however I see no change in Songbird. The album applet doesn't appear, in fact nothing seems to have changed except that it's now listed as installed in the add-ons. Am I missing something obvious here? Any clear reason why it's not working; some step I'm missing? Not a big deal, I know everything is still in testing; I'm just curious. Thanks for working on this either way!
Well, here's what my terminal output had to say on the subject: "OverlayLoader.loadOverlayList() +chrome://albumapplet/content/albumflow.xul OverlayLoader.loadPlayerOverlays() loading overlay chrome://albumapplet/content/albumflow.xul saveTabState OverlayLoader.loadPlayerOverlays() finished loading overlays Failed to create Java VM " Why I don't get a Java VM is probably simple and obvious to coder, but I'm a sculptor so I probably shouldn't be messing around with something in development in the first place. It's a cheap evening though, I'll tell you that. Thanks again and keep up the good work.
Well, chances are songbird does not have java installed. I believe this can be fixed by copying your mozilla extension folder to your songbird extension folder.
When i run this app, all covers are the same and if i delete the album with that cover, an other one just replaces all again..... anyone else with this problem? (l ove the app if i get it to work properly :/ )
Hi Ihave try to use this add-one on my ubuntu 7.10. When I install the albumapplet version 0.3.4, it's work well. But when I try to use the version 0.3.5 or 0.3.6 I get this message :
Error: [Exception... "'java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException' when calling method: [nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]" nsresult: "0x8057001c (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_JS_OBJECT)" location: "
Album applet (unfortunately) assumes that your albums are in their own folder. If you don't want to sort your music you can right click the albums (one at a time, sorry) and ask it to get a new album from the web, or specify an image yourself.
That's.... not good.... Could you make a bug in bugzilla for it, and add davidchansen@hotmail.com to the cc list? Much easier for me to handle. Also, try opening the java console, and see if it gives you any errors. It might have something a little more detailed for me to go on.
The only thing that loads is a Gradient Background
I get the same error as bricamac:
Error: loadAlbums is not defined
Source File: chrome://albumapplet/content/albumart.js
Line: 118
Error: [Exception... "'java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException' when calling method: [nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]" nsresult: "0x8057001c (NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_JS_OBJECT)" location: "
Make a bug report? Pretty please?? It's MUCH easier for me to help you if you do.
Bug report submitted. =)
hey man, great work! Just a little bit slow for practical use. Unless that can be fixed, is there a way to get a non-animated version of this (much like the middle button in iTunes, between the coverflow- and list button)? Don't get me wrong now. I know there are many album art applets out there, but all of them only show the album art of the song you're currently playing (which is nonsense btw.), not the albums you're browsing!
hi, I have just installed songbird 0.3 and your applet, but it doesn't work. I checked java on firefox and it works (Version 6 Update 3); checking on sunbird it doesn't. My OS is Ubuntu Gutsy 07.10 roberto
I just installed this and all the album covers are the same. I know they aren't supposed to be because in iTunes they were the right ones.
Open a terminal and type: ln -s /etc/alternatives/mozilla-javaplugin.so ~/Songbird/plugins/libjavaplugin.so This command assumes you have downloaded and extracted Songbird to your home directory.
Dark_Wolf, I'm hitting the same problem as schwadegan posted on Fri, 11/30/2007 about the album art files always being redownloaded and overwriting whatever album art file was previously in the album' folder. I think the solve that's needed is for the applet to maintain a list of what album art it has already successfully downloaded. Secondly, I'd like to ask if there's any plans for the applet to let the user configure a folder for the applet to get album art from, so that the applet looks in that folder first for the album art. If the applet can't find the art in that folder it goes online to try to find the art.
Writing this from the ubuntu songbird... Finally.. getting java on 64bit of Ubuntu is not a trivial matter. I'm rather confused about the overwriting of album art, but as soon as I can reproduce the bug I'll fix it. Making it look in another folder first should be possible. Very busy at the moment, but I'll get it into the next feature-adding release. What I'd really like to do would be having the albums stored in the database with the songs, but the java driver I'm using for database access is pretty slow, and I wouldn't be able to remove my entires on uninstall, so...
The applet will redownload the album art for an album irrespective of there already being correctly named art for that album already existing in an album's folder. The redownloaded album art overwrites the pre-existing album art in the folder. example: CD Single 2unlimited - Get Ready For This. Australian release, 3 track, catalogue number D1104. Album art automatically downloaded does not match the art on the cardboard sleeve for the single. Correct album art located via Google image search, downloaded with temp filename, cleaned up; cropped; and rescaled to 130x130, and placed in album folder. File name of incorrect album art copied. Incorrect album art deleted. File name rename pasted to correct art. incorrect art: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000003R93.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg art sourced to create correct art: http://roxcalibur.com/pix/e11177.jpg First restart of Songbird after manual image replace, correct art is displayed by the applet. In the background, without any notification or user intervention, applet automatically redownloads and replaces manually installed album art in album folder. Second restart of Songbird after manual image replace, initial incorrect art is displayed. OS: WinXP Pro SP2 Java: jre1.6.0_02 Songbird: Songbird 0.3 Developer Pre-release AlbumApplet: Version 0.3.6
im running leopard. how the hell do you get this thing to work? i see it in my add-ons, i installed it, but when i run songbird, i dont see anything! im new to songbird by the way. thanks.
Hi, Guys
Unfortunately latest plug in is not working for me.
Website version AlbumApplet
by Dark_Wolf
* Version 0.3.7
*
* Updated about 3 hours ago
*
Linux 64-bit
Songbird is giving me following output when I tried to install.:
Incompatible Extension
AlbumApplet 0.3.6 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Songbird 0.4.
Why 0.3.6 I don’t know. I have tried few times and I’ve correct extension 0.3.7. Bit odd.
My machine
OpenSuse 10.3 64 bit edition
SongBird 0.4
You had it working on a 64 bit version of linux?? Wow, I was under the impression that it couldn’t be done. Are you doing this with IcedTea, or??
Anyway, I’ll fix it right away so you can use it again, I just didn’t want to falsely advertise that it would work with the 64 bit version of songbird.
When I right-click the currently active album, some weird box thing with some random drawing pops up and the background becomes fuzzy.
Could there possibly be some kind of “light” rendering mode, where it only shows the album cover for the current album? It slows down the loading time for different sections considerably. Being able to disable it for, say, the “Downloads” section would be nice too.
I can get it to work on version 0.4 windows xp. Didn’t do any java updates or anything so its working with whatever i had installed.
Find it is slow loading though say from some other screen to the library.
A couple of suggestions, when you shrink the size of the window make the text shrink proportionally as well as the images, because at the moment if you make it quite small the text is very large. Also would help if the text and side scroll bar can never overlap as it can make it un-clear as to what it says.
Good Work :-)
I have a problem running the applet,
I am running Ubunto 7x10 up to date, version with java 1.6 correctly installed and Songbird 0.4.
When i install the plugin it downloads and installs perfectly; when i restart firefox apparently it loads up perfectly and I see the gray white dimming background of the extention. However no covers appear at all.
The extension seems great but cant test it. I used to have it working perfectly on Songbird 0.3
Phoy! That’s annoying….
Allright, standard questions: Does the error console tell you anything, and more importantly what does the java console tell you?
It’s a good applet, well done!
However, I have a couple of problems with it.
1. It doesn’t entirely work.
Album covers won’t automatically be downloaded; “Redownload image” also doesn’t work. I don’t know why: it doesn’t work whether Zonealarm is running or not. Last.fm itself works; album art is just not downloaded no matter what I try. I have allowed all the website integration I can in the options and everything.
2. It’s all a bit slow. To be honest, I’d like to be able to turn off the excessive graphics such as the gradient background, mirror effect, background blur and CD case surrounds, so that only the album art images are displayed. In fact, it’s slower than isnuTe’s cover flow at the moment.
I’m running it on XP on a machine that’s not so old or weak that it shouldn’t be able to handle this kind of application… but still it can’t. :(
I’m experiencing problems with this add. In place where should be covers there’s only a black gradient and a scroll. I’m running it ( v0.4) on Ubuntu 7.10. Error Console shows one error about this add.
Error: [Exception… “‘java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException’ when calling method: [nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]” nsresult: “0x8057001c (NSERRORXPCJSTHREWJSOBJECT)” location: “
I hope you’ll repair this.
Well, glad you ask.
When using the built in search of Songbird the covers stay the same. They show move, vanish, or something. Because if I’m searching I’m filtering, and if I’m doing that then I don’t wanna see the previous covers, just the covers of the songs that match the criteria I searched for.
Hello!
Iam using Ubuntu 7.10 AMD64. Unfortunality, Java has no AMD64 plugin. So i am not able to use your nice looking applet.
But maybe someone have solution to fix our problem? Maybe there will a new Version without need to have the java plugin….. This will be great!
Regards
b
There are poeple on the x64 linux platform who have made it work, so it can be done. There’s no reason that it shouldn’t work with icedtea…. That being said, I haven’t been able to get it to work under 64-bit ubuntu myself.
Alas, all of it is done in java, so a no java version is not merely unlikely, it won’t be happening unless a coding god shows up and ports the thing to c++.
really?!? This are good news. So, can you give me a link or Information for solving my problem?
I tried Icedtea–doesnt work
chroot–works, but really slow and buggy
lib32 libarys–slow & buggy
Regard
b
hey dark,
Ive just discovered what might be a reason for the Ubuntu 7.10 bug that i mentioned earlier. If you start up Songbird without the library location mounted into the system it loads up the plugin perfectly and if you mount it after the plugin loads it plays perfectly. The bug results when you mount the library location before you start up songbird. I’m thinking it might be a problem with the location of the mounted filesystems in linux.
On another note when you right click on the album art it should show the songs in that album inside the plugin like in your second screenshot. This does not work for me in either windows nor linux.
If you could solve this issue it would be great. Anyway congratz on my favorite plugin, despite some minor bugs. Keep up the great job.
Like the Album Art Manager extension, it seems like this extension doesn’t fetch album art which is embedded in the music file either.
And when the music file DOES contain an embedded album art image it should override the .folder.jpg/folder.jpg/album-artist.jpg which is located in the folder.
Is there a possibility that this could be implemented in a future release?
/sarge
Hello,
I am using
Linux (Ubuntu Gutsy )
Sun Java plugin Version 6 Update 3
And I got the following error.
When I open the playlist it gives me the black gradient screen and no album art. Instead of that it gives me a warning at the console.
Error: [Exception… “‘java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException’ when calling method: [nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]” nsresult: “0x8057001c (NSERRORXPCJSTHREWJSOBJECT)” location: “
Do you know what is it?
Tks!
Honestly? I have no clue why you’re getting that error. There seems to be a lot fo trouble with Album Applet on Ubuntu, though I can’t say if it’s just Ubuntu or Linux in general. The linux users who have been able to get it to work aren’t being very helpful, and considering I’m using javascript and java it should be the same on all platforms.
Hi Dark_Wolf,
Incredible add-on for SongBird! I like eye-candy, always did and this is barely the only thing I ever liked from iTunes (which wasn’t always part of it). But I have some suggestions, some are important for me to use this add-on some are secondary…
1) Is it possible to add a button (somewhere) to show/hide the applet? Much like the 3 different views on iTunes.
2) This next suggestion makes more sense (I think) if the above feature can be implemented: When the applet is active, there’s always some album select, I think that when this happens, the library should be automatically filtered to display only the songs in that album.
3) I don’t know why, but on my system, this applet is really slow and really buggy. It takes some time to start, some time to go through all the covers (not fluid animations like on iTunes), sometimes it breaks (specially when I right-click on a cover, does it do anything?), etc… I know this are the initial versions but you should really work on that, it’s not very usable like this… Or maybe the problem is my system?
4) The covers should be filtered by the search terms also. I think someone already suggested this and I really think it’s something that should be implemented.
5) I don’t like the album title, I think it looks awful. Maybe you could add some options to enable/disable it and to customize it’s font perhaps?
6) Last one… The “scrollbar” to go through the covers, looks kinda ugly overall…
Hello, i whant to help you developping the Album Applet. Can you say me where i can download the Source Code?
Thanks
Hi, when I install this addon it appears in the extensions list greyed out with the description ‘Not compatible with Sonbird 0.4’.
Any help?
Unzip the xpi ;) It’s all there
1) mm…well… I suppose it could be done, yes
2) Well, hmm… right now it filters with a single click, but I guess it could be made an option
3) Right…yes…. Short answer: I know, and steps will be taken to help this. Long answer: The idea is to move it all to an openGL code, so it can make proper use of your grahics chip. As things look now however, it won’t be happening for the next 4-6 months though. Sorry.
The next release of java should improve things regardless.
4) On the todo list….
5) Yes, could be done.
6) Yes, I know…. you’re welcome to make a better one :p Eventually I will be making a nicer one.
hmm….well… if you’re using Mac, you’re out of luck. Keeping a version that worked with the old java 1.5 system that Mac’s are using is simply too much work. It will be compatible when Mac gets their behinds out of the chair and get the new version of java working.
Maybe it could be a great idea to implement this feature with pictureflow (http://code.google.com/p/pictureflow/) instead of Java. Isn’t it?
Well, it would mean replacing a commonly used browser plugin with a somewhat more obscure one.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it looks like a great idea, but getting java onto peoples machines is hard, getting the QTpugin that pictureflow requires will be even worse I’m afraid :(
Thanks for your answers :)
About the scrollbar, I would, if I had the time.. Right now I’m very busy.
How long should it take to find the album art for your library? I have a relatively small library of about 850 tracks and it seems that it isn’t going out and finding the covers. When I try to scroll though the covers to see what may have loaded, it locks up songbird. It also locks up if I double click any of the album covers.
this may sound like a stupid question but i hav installed this add on but i dont know how to turn it on or make it appear in my libary!any help?
thanks
Hey your plugin looks pretty good on your pictures. But for some reason it won’t appear in my Songbird, the library looks all the same like without the plugin. My OS is Fedora 8, Java is installed (Version 1.7.0 according to java.com it should be the newest version available). I also see the Java Plugin when I type about:plugins in my Songbird. What I’ve done wrong that the plugin won’t appear?
I also found an error prompt in my error console: Error: java is not defined
Source File: chrome://albumapplet/content/albumart.js
Line: 414".
doesn’t work
all covers are just that default songbird pic
it doesn’t search for the covers and put them in–.–
(no, there’s no problem with my firewall)
That’s because you guys don’t have java installed on SongBird. If you go into /usr/lib/mozilla and copy the plugins folder that’s there over to your SongBird folder, it should work.
nono thats not the problem
java is installed…
Oh, sorry. Had to re-read it. Yeah, I’m having the same problem. I don’t know why it’s not going out and getting the cover art.
I’m having an issue with this too. It works ok as far as scrolling between the items, and the double-click-to-play feature works great. But it won’t go and download the album artwork, and when I right-click on the album, I get a weird sort of semi-zoom of the default artwork, the background goes fuzzy, and it won’t let me do anything until I switch to another window and go back. Not sure what the issue is, but just wanted to let you know.
Running Windows Vista Home Premium, but the same problem happens in XP as well. Great graphics card, too, so that’s not it.
that would be sweet.. i did the same thing… all my album art is “cover.jpg”… if it could do as you suggest it would save me a lot of time…
yeah, exactly the same!!
at this buggy semi-zoom u can press ESCAPE instead of switching windows
I would like to test it, but It don’t want to install with version 0.4 of Songbird…
Let’s wait for new version
looks nice.. doesn’t work at my station .. :(
(ubuntu feisty .. please work on it .. I don’t see if I’ve done anything wrong .. just doesn’t bring up any covers .. just a blank black stripe where the covers should be ..)
(songbird g4g !!)
Ok, here’s the inside scoop:
The Ubuntu (linux in general?) problem is one of security. Something, either java (unlikely) or mozilla (very likely) is preventing me from accessing the database file on the system. There might be a general problem with the java-unwrapper, but it’s not one I’m able to fix. As it is now, we can hope that this is fixed by the mozilla team or the Firefox java Extension team at MIT. Yes, there’s a chance I could hack around this, but it’s not easy (I’ve tried) and I simply do not have the time (we’ll get back to this later).
As for speed and various other problems, they’re on the todo-list, but it will be a while.
//START Boring development talk
The songbird development team have suggested (quite a few time) that I get off this java idea I have, and I’m sort of inclined to agree with them. The problem is ofcourse that the only real alternative is flash (which is slow and buggy under linux, moreso than java, is closed source and I don’t really feel like learning it. Heck I’d rather use silverlight) or the beta opengl plugin for mozilla (which would be great, kept that loading images through javascript is SLOW).
Ideally it would be moved to a C+ or similar enviroment, but noone has done anything like this (animations via c+ in mozilla), probably because it can’t be done as an addon or extension, but only as a plugin (and no, picLens simply takes over your entire screen, and that’s not what I want).
So, it looks like it will be staying in java, but moved to java opengl, which should improve speed a LOT. The fact that I don’t know openGL is only a minor setback.
//END Boring developmend talk
Therealproblem here is that I’m currently writing my bachelor, which takes a lot of time and quite a lot of coding, and realisticly nothing will happen with the Album Applet until I’m done this summer. Auch. I’ve tried asking for help with this, but noone seems to be interested meaning it’s now in an official status of hiatus.
I’ll update it to be 0.5 compatible when the RC starts comming, but that’s probably the amount of work you’ll see on this for the next 4-6 months.
hey Dark_Wolf
i am a linux user, and a Java developer and i could contribute to your project. However my expertise has never been on graphical aplications so i would have to analyze your code if you should accept my collaboration.
Let me know!
Very cool thing… I always wanted such a thing without iTunes, because I don’t want to use it…
but here’s a problem, don’t know if this was mentioned yet…
When I’m scrolling to the left side, the “Flow” works. but if I’m going to the right side, the covers are not flowing, but are “hopping”. it#s not this smooth flow, but it’s jerky(?)…
Well, that would be great!
The most recent source is already in the xpi (just unzip it), but maybe we could get in touch over email or MSN? My email is davidchansen@hotmail.com and I’m usually online.
This here http://www.songbirdnest.com/node/2505 was the original call for aid, just to let you know :p
And I’ve got two other problems… OK, maybe three^^
first, everywhere I’m looking, there’s such a f**king Album Art of Scooter, but I’m not hearing scooter^ so why are they everywhere^
second, when I try to replace covers, this is only working with tracks/albums, that have a cover in the Applet listed, but if there’s the default picture, the songbird icon, the applet crashes… there’s a little rectangle, where the window should appear…
and third selecting of albums only work, if in the default selection (this year–artist–lbum thing) all lists are selected as “All”, but when I’ve selected an album or artist or year, or a combination, a click on the album-art does nothing… it’s not showing the tracklist of the album…
greez mihawk
PS: system is vista HPx64 with songbird 0.4
Gr8 i will check out the source and get in touch with you through the MSN
Ya need to make this compatible with Sb .5
this need to be finished! its too good just let go to waste!
Why’s it still not compatible!! upset
I’m very very sorry that it’s not working, I really am, but I can’t figure out what’s broke with the 0.5, and with a 60 hour workweek I don’t have time to do a full debugging process.
It’s very sad to see so much work go to waste.
Hopefully someone will be willing to help me with this, but it’s not very likely, most people run away when they see the sourcecode.
I will try to get it fixed this summer, but I won’t have any time before June.
Hey Dark_Wolf
As we talked in MSN, i’ll have a look at the code. Maybe i’ll find something.
And the code is really not THAT bad.
Hi Dark_Wolf,
I am looking for a simple add-on that take the image in the current played mp3 and display it (on the bottom left corner – like “Album Art Manager” add-on). My computeur is not very fast that’s why I want simple feature just display, no internet no itune like animation. Is it possible to derivate such an add-on from your “Album Applet” add-on ?
thanks for your answer,
Marcox
I have it working with Songbird 0.5. I’ll get a patch sent to Dark_Wolf ASAP.
There’s still a few bugs…
The one that disturbs most is that one cover is on 85% of the albums :(
Is this a general problem or is it just my songbird?
The applet works best with a sorted collection of music. Meaning each album gets a separate folder. It will try to find the best image for each album either way, but sometimes it simply isn’t able.
Doesn’t work for me. I’m using songbird 0.6 (build 20080418012948) on a Mac runing 10.5.2 I’ve installed the java developer thing (well, i openend the package, anything else need to be done?) When i choose the AlbumApplet-view, what I get is exactly the same as the list-view.
Same for me as Brakke…. seems to do nothing….
Java 1.6 is out for Mac (Leopard) now:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/javaformacosx105update1.html
Downloaded and installed the update stevel told but seems it doesn’t still work.
Same problem as before….
Hrm–looks like that update still requires 64-bit clients, so it can’t be used in Songbird or Firefox for Java applets. Bummer :( You’ll still have to use the old version of AlbumApplet that Dark_Wolf mentioned, sorry.
hello,
i install it twice and get the same problem :
the applet is active (java also) but i only have a empty window wirh no cover at all.
Whereas in itunes, i get not all but many covers ok.
So are there some process to do in order to index the covers ?
thx,
my system : windows xp and songbird 0.6pre
For the Mac crowd remember that you need to install java into songbird which might not happen automaticly. I don’t have a MaC on which I can test this stuff so it’s always a bit of a guess…
Kokola:
Please check to make sure the “download coverart” option is on.
The album art thing is rather jerky to animate on m computer, and my computer is pretty good. also, it seems to always show ALL of my library, even if my playlist only has like 20 items in it. Uninstalled until its useable.
i downloaded this one, but i get a light grey screen with no album covers, meanwhile current album cover is showing the right album cover
i’m trying for hours now, but it doesnt work on ubuntu hardy. current java is installed. i also tried to put songbird in the home-folder because of eventual rights problems of java, but i didn’t work.
error console says: java is not defined, but on websites java works fine through songbird.
any ideas how to solve this?
now i managed to get java kind of running: if somebody want to help me figuring out the problem; on ubuntu hardy you need to link to a different java plugin file than firefox uses. out of the /opt/Songbird/plugins folder:
sudo ln–s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
the album applet background now appears, but no covers.
error console now says:
Error: Error: mediaListView may only be set once. Please reload the page
Source File: chrome://songbird/content/bindings/sbTabBrowser.xml
Line: 2166
when activating the albumapplet view, this error appears:
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception… “Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NSERRORFAILURE) [sbILocalDatabaseTreeView.setMouseState]” nsresult: “0x80004005 (NSERRORFAILURE)” location: “JS frame :: chrome://songbird/content/bindings/playlist.xml :: _onMouseMove :: line 1832” data: no]
when starting a song:
Error: [Exception… “‘java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException’ when calling method: [nsIObserver::observe]” nsresult: “0x8057001c (NSERRORXPCJSTHREWJSOBJECT)” location: “JS frame :: file:///opt/Songbird/components/sbDataRemote.js :: anonymous :: line 326” data: no]
Source File: file:///opt/Songbird/components/sbDataRemote.js
Line: 326
do you have any ideas?
Does this work with OpenJDK on Ubuntu?
Also, I have Songbird 1.5 running from the directory from the tar.gz and not ‘actually’ installed—albeit it works fine!
hi master501,
it doesnt run on ubuntu. not with openJRE and not with sunJRE. i hope to figure out why.
what about other linux distributions?
Hi Stevel,
thanks a lot. Do you know how to get it working on Ubuntu Hardy?
Nils
I am having the same problem as other Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) users. I have even set SunJAVA to be the default Java handler, I am using the latest version 1.6.0.06, and have set up a symbolic link to the Java plugin (as SUN advise against physically copy/moving it to another location)
Any ideas peeps?
Great idea and great add-on. A couple of issues: - When I use the left/right cursor keys to scroll through the albums the animation for moving to the next album only runs when going left. If I press right, the next album cover just appears. - More importantly, when I click on a selected album, or a double-click on one, I take it it's supposed to jump to that album and start playing. Right now, it just gives me a pop-up which says: setAlbumFilter( 'From Her To Eternity' ) TypeError: playlist is null - Running WinXP and Songbird 0.5 final for these tests - I'm also running Gutsy at home, and haven't tested it there yet, but for me, it would be more important to see those Linux issues worked out as well.
I get the same playlist is null error images do not download and this is just useless in its current state
This is a great piece of work I am impressed.
But, I seem to be getting an error after a brand new install.
setAlbumFilter(’albumname’);
TypeError:playlist is null
What’s that all about?
finally got the applet working on ubuntu , but it is incredibly slow and unusable , anyone else have this issue ?
to get java running i entered the following
sudo ln –s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.06/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /opt/Songbird/plugins
hi garrethdk,
what else did you do to get it running? because in my case there just appears the applets gray background, but no covers are displayed.
dosen’t work.
everytime I click on an album, it pops up an error and says that the “file is null” the last time I tried it sayed “i screwed up, i swear it wasn’t me” please help
Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but when I open the applet view, it displays a few covers as they should be, a few with the default Songbird logo, but most of them with the cover of one (apparently randomly chosen and changing occasionally on refresh) album over and over. The songs that are singles on their own or do not have a set cover, I would expect the default logo to be displayed instead, so it kinda throws things off. Some that WMP says I have the art for, I get the random album cover instead. Do I need to go through and set cover manually to the correct one, even though I checked the option to have the program get the covers from last.fm? Other than that odd little quirk, I’d like this add-on.
Running Vista home premium, just got the new Java, on Songbird 0.5.
I’m getting an error when I select an album (left click on it). “ ‘
Also, am I able to sort by album artist in some way?
I've also noticed inconsistent behavior: When I use the scroll wheel to scroll forward, it scrolls really fast (without noticeable transition between albums), which isn't bad actually. But when I scroll backwards, it scrolls really slow while there is a slow transition between covers
And another thing: Have you looked into the free Qt CoverFlow clone (it's called PictureFlow)? I think that is a slighly better implementation. PictureFlow is also implemented as a plugin in Rockbox (www.rockbox.org). It's a GPL'd algorith.
–Dark_Wolf, You is my hero, i really love this applet. After mucking about with it for several hours to work around its personality i had a real interesting idea, well, request:
Since the album covers associate with an album playlist, why not tweak it to be a Visual Playlist? Basically:
1. Enable users to create an icon to associate with a playlist they have created, or create the playlist at the same time by adding a button at the left side of the slider that says “Add Icon”
2. Enable users to assign playlists to assets by right clicking and selecting an option like: “link to Playlist.”
3. If there is no playlist for an associated Album art automatically goto and play the first track of the album in the library.
4. Allow users to right click on an artless album/icon and associate an image with it.
I know that’s a tall order, but i’m a user interface designer, well, video game designer, and i have been giving this a thought from a usability perspective and i think that a Visual playlist tool would be unbelievable. Since i think the current playlist form is a bit.. icky.
Also–i’m a crappy programmer but decent artist and i would gladly help.
Thanks!
doesn’t work for me. I have the proper java installed according to the java.com site but nothing happens when I choose albumapplet from the view menu, just stays in list view. Looks like it could be cool if it worked.
OK, I made a symlink to the java plugin in my ubuntu install in the plugins directory of the Songbird folder and now I get a gray background and nothing else. so at least I got that. still doesn’t work, but at least it tries to do something. any ideas as to why it doesn’t work would be nice.
for all of you suffering ubuntu users who don’t get this extension working, try this javascript based one: MediaFlow http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/238
Hm, quite a big discussion on the MediaFlow addon page shows that it definitely doesn’t work on Linux. So seems Linux-users are schtucked on this one..
Hi,
After I upgraded to Songbird 0.6, my covers don’t show up
anymore. I did a clean install and re-imported my library, but
still the same problem. All my files have the cover on their tags.
Any ideas?
Thanks for a great program and add-on.
I forgot to say that I am running MacOS X 10.5.3 (Leopard).
Chosmis: Sounds odd? Are you sure you’re running the
latest version? It works on windows..
Otherwise feel free to contact me at davidchansen@hotmail.com
Dark_Wolf. Yeah, I am sure it’s 0.6 (I just installed it). I don’t think it’s a specific problem with AlbumApplet, because none of the add-ons that have to use covers work (they all show blank covers). Do you know where this problem may come from?
None of them work? That’s very odd indeed, we fetch covers in completely different ways. When you say “Don’t show up”, what do you mean? Do you still get all your albums, just with the default songbird logo?
Great to see another Infected Mushroom fan (judging by the screenshots) but a shame it doesn’t work on ubuntu… What is it with coverflow style add-ons and ubuntu :(
Hi Dark_Worf: In the case of media flow, there is a blank flow. In the case of AlbumApplet, the pane doesn’t even show up. I can see the covers on the individual files on the finder and on iTunes, so they are there… very weird. This was working fine with 0.5.
chosmis: the pane doesn’t show up?? Do you have java
1.6?
www.java.com -> Do I have
java?
If you do in fact have java 1.6, try looking in the errorconsole.
Does it post any errors?
Slate8: Yeah, Infected Mushroom are one of my favorite bands. Most
of the Album Applet was written with them through the speakers. As
for the ubuntu bug, I’ve finally managed to replicate it in
Fedora, meaning I might actually be able to fix it…..
I’m not sure what is acutally causing this though. Maybe
it’s the same problem Chosmis has on OS
X? Would explain a lot….
btw, chosmis, need to take songbird to java.com, not firefox ;)
I just installed this on the latest Songbird 0.6.1 on OS X 10.5.3, and the “media views” item on the dropdown menu is grayed out, so apparently I can’t use the plugin? I’m saddened and confused. I did restart Songbird, it had no effect.
Of this was a java problem, it wouldn’t have worked on Sonbird 0.5 right? It worked then, it doesn’t work now, so I think is something else…
But…but…. chosmis, the Album Applet never worked on
Songbird 0.5….. Though I suppose it did show the albums.
But you have a point….. I think it’s the same problem
the linux crowd is having though, so hopefully it’ll be fixed
soon…..
Well this sounds great but I found that its load time was very slow. Especially in comparison to MediaFlow with Album Art Manager
I run Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) AMD64 with IcedTea/OpenJDK Java version 1.6.0.
When i check my version at Java.com, it tells me that I have version 1.6.0 but not the latest version (1.6 Update 7), so that might be the problem.
When I switch to AlbumApplet I get:
'Error: java is not defined
Source File: chrome://albumapplet/content/albumart.js'
in my Error Console. So it seems to be a problem when the javascript is trying to load the Java functions(?). Does that have a connection with me using a slightly outdated Java version?
Hope that might help a little when trying to fix it :)
It seems like a nice addon so I really would like to see it working, especially since MediaFlow is really slow in Linux as well.
ok, I have confirmed that it is the IcedTea/OpenJDK that does it. I installed a 32-bit firefox with the ia32-java-6-sun-1.6.0.06 plugin and tried the applet there and it works fine.
The only possible solutions I can think of is:
1. Wait for the 1.7 ver of Java. (I think it should have 64-bit plugins)
2. Rewrite this addon so it will work with IcedTea/OpenJDK (Not that much fun, i guess)
3. Get the 32-bit version of Songbird to run on a 64-bit dist (Didn't work for me when I tried)
Anyone with a better solution? Please tell me, I really want a CoverFlow addon..
So does this NOT "Let the user browse HER library by album cover, and download news one?" Or did you mean "their?"
I like this a lot. I have a couple of suggestions.
One, very easy (I think): rather than display Artist - Album, how about Album Artist - Album? See the difference? I have some albums that have remixes by the same person, but each individual song was originally done by different people. Yet the album is really by one person. But this addon shows the name of the artist that did the first song on the album, which is typically not the name of the person that remixed and compiled the album.
Second, could you enlarge the pictures?
"Let's the user browse his library by album cover, and download news one"
So it will not allow "hers" to work?
this is a great plugin. keep up the good work.
and psetus, English doesn't have gender neutral possessive pronoun. "Their" is only used singularly when used with an indefinite antecedent.
Just a simple request really, what skin are you using? It looks lovely.
@Russ
That's rubberducky, which is discontinued. You won't be able to get it.
Has this plugin been discontinued ?
Yes. In the end there was no way I could get acceptable load speeds using java in songbird (had to start up the java vm), and the songbird dev team officially supported MediaFlow, so there was little point in continuing.
Please make it compatible with 1.2.
Thank you
I have just downloaded the newest Songbird, the 1st time I've tried this player. I love it, and this skin is the perfect example of what I envisaged the best player to be like. The itunes art with the 3 columns, and song underneath. Perfect. Please update this to work with the newest Songbird, please!!!
Sorry this is just the skin, but what about that layout? Where can I get that? please let me know.
Hi one thing that I would love to have is to be able to have the album cover/album art full screen.. Nowhere seems to have this...That would be great:)
Hi author, I want translate your plugin to russian language. Please tell me Your email, simply reply me to mrilyuha@gmail.com. Thanks, FatCow
based on 48 ratings
sefk
Working. The album art show isn't the good one for me. But we have a good start.