Ataksak - Amarok 2.0 Beta 3 released

It is that time again! The time where the world seems just a little brighter and happier, the sun shines just a little warmer and even though (at least in the northern hemisphere) winter is approaching fast, people are just that little bit more friendly towards each other. Yes, this can only mean one thing: it is time for another beta of Amarok 2.



The Amarok team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Beta 3, codename Ataksak, of the upcoming Amarok 2.0. This release is yet another significant step towards the final version. Beta 3 fixes a number of serious bugs and enhances many parts of the application. Some parts underwent significant rewrites in order to fix some deeply rooted problems. All in all, Amarok 2 is now a much more polished application.

Some of the most significant changes are:

• playlist and statusbar recieved major attention
• database/statistics import from Amarok 1.4
• major overhaul of the Last.fm integration
• sorting by year and album in the Collection Browser is possible again (small, but often requested)
• shortcut to jump to current track in the playlist
• many, many bugs squashed and stability fixes

Now is the time for script authors to start porting scripts. The first scripts are appearing on kde-apps.org.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with bugreports and patches. Keep them coming :)

As we're getting close to a final release of Amarok 2.0, more and more distributions offer packages in their repositories. Windows binaries are available through the KDE-on-Windows installer. So try it and tell us what you think and please consider contributing to our yearly fundraiser Roktober. Or if you are not so lucky, grab the tarball and compile it yourself:
The full list of changes:

Features

• More intelligent sorting of items in the collection browser, using locale aware sorting and natural sorting for numbers. Patch by Nicholas Wilson . (BR 154408)
• The playlist automatically scrolls when dragging tracks. (BR 171622)
• Import statistics from Amarok 1.4.
• Double clicking items in the Albums applet appends to playlist.
• Service scripts can now specify custom info for artist, album and friends that will be shown in the playlist and other places, independetly of their actual parent item in the service. This value is ignored if item is not a level 0 item. Specifying these values is completely optional.
• Playlists can be added using the Add Media dialogs.
• Collection browser can once again sort by Year - Album.
• Albums applet shows disc number separators.
• Context menu and drag & drop support for the albums applet.
• Added tracks count and total playlist time to the status bar. (BR 171652)
• You can now Copy To a collection, Append, and Load tracks from the file browser's context menu.

Changes

• Improved usability for the collection configuration dialog.
• XSPF playlists will now attempt to apply any stored metadata to items not owned by a service when loading. This will make many streams stored on shutdown appear with correct metadata after a restart of Amarok.
• Scripted services are now able to set the infoHtml used in the service info applet for individual tracks.
• The default lyrics script now uses the LyricWiki site, which is more reliable and also faster than the old lyrics provider.
• Add script API function: Amarok.Collection.escape which escapes strings for SQL statements.
• Some new and updated icons.
• Allow multiple items to be selected in the user playlist category.
• Statusbar rewrite: Messages are no longer shown as top-level windows.
• Added proper mouse over visuals to some places where it was missing.
• All services (or any other part of Amarok) can now add context actions to any item in any collection. This is only used for the "play similar artists from last.fm" currently, but it allows this kind of action to be added without hardcoding it in the core. The immidiate effect of this is that the last.fm action is now available for any artist in any collection.
• New "playground" directory added for plugins and applets that are not yet ready for prime time.
• Nonconsecutive items can now be selected and dragged around in the playlist.
• Major overhaul of playlist subsystem, including a completely new view (even though it looks a lot like to old one). Programmers should review the SVN commit notes to learn about other changes.
• Selecting "Move to Collection" in the file browser's context menu will now recursively include all directories within the selected items.
• Selecting "Move to Collection" in the file browser's context menu will now delete the original source files as expected.

Bugfixes

• Correct scrobbling for all tracks, even last.fm streams and loved tracks in Last.Fm streams. (BR 164156)
• Files moved or organized into themselves are no longer deleted. (BR 173341)
• Fix playlist scrollbar graphical errors with some styles. Patch by Huynh Huu Long . (BR 173547)
• DBus MPRIS call GetMetadata returns the location field. (BR 173324)
• Amarok would not show all files it could play in the files browser (BR 173333)
• Amarok now remembers its panel sizes over restarts. Patch by Gary Steinert . (BR 172976)
• Automatic track score computation works now.
• Immediately remove the playlist drop visualiser from the playlist after dropping an item. (BR 171382)
• Albums applet doesn't jumble up most recent albums listing.
• Fix problems with Amarok stopping playback after each track in some cases. (BR 172897)
• Don't forget about downloaded images after doing a collection rescan.
• Fixed giant font in the Internet tab on some machines. (BR 172954)
• MPRIS Dbus interface Pause function conforms is a Play/Pause action. (BR 173007)
• Script downloads using KNewStuff2 now correctly installs and uninstalls scripts.
• Fix memleak in iPod handler. Thanks to Christophe Fergeau.
• Wikipedia applet: Fix infinite retry loop if no artist information is found. (BR 171074)
• First track of an album in the playlist can now be dragged seperately from the entire album. (BR 171331)
• Fix crash when searching in the shoutcast service. (BR 170681)
• Fix crash when adding multiple shoutcast stations. (BR 170247)
• Escape HTML characters from track metadata when showing the system tray tooltip. Patch by Andrey Esin . (BR 172623)
• Only add one new folder when selecting "Add Folder" from the context menu in the user playlist category. (BR 169666)
• Statusbar rewrite: Bring back the detailed progres operations view. It is now possible again to get a list of all running operations and to cancel each one individually. (BR 168380)
• Statusbar rewrite: The "cancel all" button now works.
• Statusbar rewrite: Don't hang on exit. (BR 171665)
• When searching in the collection, give keyboard focus to the results after pressing Enter. (BR 172379)
• Do not set two different lyrics scripts as default.
• File sizes for non-collection local tracks are now determined properly.
• Track rating and score are now enabled for read-only files too.
• Play option from playlist context menu works now. (BR 172141)
• Cloud applet moved to playground as it still needs a lot of work. (BR 170613)
• Playlist overhaul fixes a couple of bugs. (BR 167861) (BR 171048)
• Search queries with ' and \ now work fine. (BR 173330)