Download Songbird 0.5 RC1

The first release candidate of version 0.5 of Songbird was released on Tuesday. Songbird is an open source and cross platform media player created by Poti, short for Pioneers of the Inevitable. This group of developers was previously involved with Winamp and the Yahoo Music Engine. The biggest change in version 0.5 is the support for portable music players mtp use, a feature that only works on Windows XP or higher and also requires Windows Media Player 11. The full release notes for version 0.5 RC1 are as follows:

New features and improvements

• New Device API with initial MTP Device Support Add-on. We encourage you to provide feedback on your experience with your favorite MTP device. Please see our MTP Device Compatibility Feedback page.
• Extensible Library Views now enable developers to create add-ons that add additional library views in Songbird
• Improved shuffle algorithm
• Added Mac menu/key command support for:
  • Hide Songbird (Command-H)
  • Hide Others (Command-Option-H)
  • Show All
  • Preferences… (Command-,)
  • Quit Songbird (Command-Q)
• Improved RSS playlist support/parsing
• Notification to let Linux users know they need to add the GStreamer plugin
• Added “Source” column to downloads playlist

Known bugs/issues

All Platforms

• Songs with special characters are not sorted correctly
• ‘Edit’ menu items not hooked up
• Index column width can be shrunk to cut off index values
• Audioscrobbler add-on not updated to support this release
• Need to change the HTTP accept-language tag to match locale
• [ipod] adding/removing media items and status display happen in wrong order
• Window min/max sizing does not respect DPI

Windows Specific

• [QT] erratic playback for protected aac (m4p) files (do not use nsITimer)
• Auto hide task bar is not maximized when SB is maximized
• QuickTime add-on does not play Fairplay files with a Flash file in the mainwin
• [ipod] Multiple Fairplay warning dialog boxes
• [mtp] Content that is no longer on device is not pruned from Library on mount
• [win][linux] Maximize icon displays always, even when is should be minimized
• [mtp] metadata for existing media items are off
• Install of RC1 on top of 0.4 causes empty folder dialog

Linux Specific

• Text cut-off in library, etc, when fonts are in large DPI mode
• No way to have system-wide install (can only install to a single user)
• Restarting app too quickly after quitting causes a “app is still running dialog”
• Drag & Drop or folder or media onto app no ​​working
• [win][linux] Maximize icon displays always, even when is should be minimized
• [iPod] 3rd Gen Nano will not unmount/eject

Mac OS X Specific

• [QT] erratic playback for protected aac (m4p) files (do not use nsITimer)
• “Cheezy Video Window” cannot be hidden or resized
• Most keyboard shortcuts unavailable on OS X
• [mac][ipod] iTunes can interfere with mount of iPod in Songbird
• QuickTime add-on does not play Fairplay files with a Flash file in the mainwin

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