Amarok Blog

So my last blog has been a bit of a teaser. Some of you have guessed it right: 'Fast Forward' is the name of the brand new amaroK 1.4 series. Today we have released the first beta version of Fast Forward. We're excited, because 1.4 has the longest changelog of all amaroK releases to date. You're in for a treat

Let's look at some of the new key features in 1.4:

- Support for Metadata (Tags) in WMA, MP4/AAC and RealMedia (RA,RV,RM) files
- Scriptable lyrics support, amaroK can now get lyrics from ANY lyrics site (if you, or one else, make a simple script-based plugin)
- Switchable Wikipedia locale
- The xine engine now has gapless playback (Needs xine-lib 1.1.1) and audio CD support with CDDB lookups
- Reworked media device system, the Apple® iPod® support has been improved enormously in the 1.4 series iRiver®/ifp and generic media devices
- Moodbar, a visual representation of your music's mood (requires exscalibar)
- And last but not least increased stability by improved under-the-hood code

And to integrate all these new features without making the application too complex, a lot of thought has gone into refining the user interface. I think we have succeeded in making amaroK more powerful, and yet simplified the interface at the same time. 1.4 should actually be easier to use than the 1.3 series!

The first thing that had to go was the fourth tab in the "Context" sidebar. Four is just one too many, this has been obvious to us for quite some time. So we have moved the "Home" tab into a separate Statistics tool with a pleasant interface. Also, we've cut down on useless and confusing options, like the tag recoding features, which had some weird side effects on tagging.

So, ya, it's good stuff. Have at it