Amarok 2.1: Mini Update

A few weeks ago I started working on improving a few little niggling problems that I’ve been having with Amarok recently. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve done.

Prettier Collection Browser

A image is really the best way to show this:

You can see that each collection uses more space to make it easier to find and select/expand, a descriptive icon and the number of tracks in each collection.

Better Compilation Support

Various artist handling has been poor through Amarok 2, but we’re looking at remedies. Thanks to Michael Quinn, we have a patch that already vastly improves the detection of compilations during a collections can. You can see these albums in the screenshot above, too.

Improved iPodding

This mainly involves artwork support - writing and reading artwork to and from an iPod works nicely now. So, if you use your iPod as your main collection, you’ll be able to see your artwork now. There’s still no way to do a batch artwork update, but that’s certainly on the cards.

I don’t like to tease too much — so to save you asking, Amarok 2.1 beta 1 should be available for widespread testing within a fortnight. Lap it up when it arrives!