Windar 0.2.1 released!

Date: 2010.07.29 | Category: Windar | Response: 0

Changes in this release:

• Changed licence from GPL to LGPL.
• Improved installer, with option to remove Application Data.
• Reduced the total file-size of the installer.
• Improved the Playdar state detection using the stat method.
• Updated to Erlang R014A, and reduced to bare essentials.
• Removed the Napster resolver and plugin. There is potential that this will be re-introduced in the next Windar release.
• Removed the MPlayer-powered test player to reduce installer size. It will require better error handling for failed web requests which might be recovered by MPlayer automatically.
• Removed the Scrobbler plugin as it required an auth hack. This had been intended to work with the test player, and may instead be made to work independently in a future release..

Download: Windar 0.2.1

Spiffdar fork and update

Date: 2010.06.13 | Category: Spiffdar | Response: 0

The license for the original Spiffdar by Steven Gravell has recently been updated, allowing a new Playnode fork which is available for demo here. This new fork is provided under the GPL (v2 or newer) and includes recent versions of Prototype, Playdar.js and SoundManager. It has been trimmed-down a bit for now, and will be further developed.

Now easier to build Windar from source (GPL)

Date: 2010.05.15 | Category: Windar | Response: 0

It has not been easy to build Windar from source, until now.

• Pre-compiled binaries required have been compressed with 7-zip and added to GitHub.
• The main Windar solution is compatible with Visual Studio 2008 Express (free download).
• The page “Build and develop” has been added to the project wiki.

Anyone is free to fork and develop Windar under the terms of the GPL. The project is released under GPL version 2.1 or later, allowing it to be combined with many other GPL works.

Windar download file-size reductions

Date: 2010.05.13 | Category: Windar | Response: 0

Since adding a test player and additional resolvers to the Windar download it grew from around 13.3mb to 20.4mb which seems a bit on the large side. The included Erlang core has been cut down further, removing redundant files, and the py2exe compiled Python resolver scripts are now done together, reducing the size too. The resulting installer file-size is 16.3mb and since the test player plugin might be provided as a separate download, this could bring the Windar download file-size back down to around 11.2mb.

Playnode Infinity demo for Windows and Linux

Date: 2010.05.12 | Category: Playnode Infinity | Response: 3

Demo downloads for Windows and Java (Linux and others) to accompany the earlier demo for Mac OS X:

• Playnode Infinity demo for Windows
• Playnode Infinity demo for Java (Linux and others)

Read the rest of this entry »

Windar news moved to the playnode.org blog

Date: 2010.05.05 | Category: Windar | Response: 5

All future posts for Windar development will be posted to the playnode.org blog. News for all Playnode projects will be available here from now on.

De-coupling core modules

Date: 2010.05.04 | Category: Playnode Infinity | Response: 0

Problems with tight coupling have been ironed-out using modules as interfaces. The decorator modules have been de-coupled. Database, player and resolver modules too.

All of those modules could have alternative implementations and some will. For example, an audio player in Java supporting Ogg and MP3 is included now, but there’s enough reason to consider additional players. The UI decorator modules would try to get the best from Swing across all and on some specific platforms such as Mac OS X where it could look and feel native.

The database de-coupling removes dependency on annotation classes. However, there might be good reason to develop a smaller faster database at some stage too.

The following diagram provides an overview of the project modules and their dependencies.

The orange module is the main GUI module. The modules shown in green are the interface modules which are used to de-couple the core modules.

The de-coupled modules are loaded at runtime with class names provided in the configuration properties file. The interfaces for these are explicit, reasonably clean but likely unfinished.

Work continues on a nice cross-platform Swing UI. The CrossPlatformDecorator class is part working, and will be using the Swing Metal Ocean look and feel.

Playnode Infinity demo for Mac OS X and GPL source-code released

Date: 2010.04.26 | Category: Playnode Infinity | Response: 1

An initial demo of Playnode for Mac OS X is now available to download direct from the GitHub project site. The source-code for this demo is now available there too.

This is a work-in-progress and the demo is a first look for Mac OS only so far, but only a little more work and a demo will be available for Windows and Linux… (soon!)

Requires Java (probably version 6 and above).

Playnode Infinity requires Playdar to be installed and available with playlist content ready. The database for building playlists is only done so far as loading a playlist from XSPF. To get started simply load an XSPF file with a playlist with content to be resolved by Playdar. The resolver runs automatically when loading or selecting a persisted playlist. A playlist can be resolved again using the resolver button.

The source-code and jars can be rebuilt using the supplied ant scripts. Anyone interested in contributing is encouraged to build, fork and suggest improvements. IntelliJ IDEA has been used in developing the software so far. It is likely that the free community edition of the software will be compatible with the project files included. If not then this is something that might be fixed soon.

Planned features include developing pluggable skins and player back-ends.

• Currently using Java mp3 and ogg player which does not appear to support all streams yet. It could be useful to support alternative back-end players such as mplayer for instance to either improve performance or compatibility.
• Support for different GUI styles is also being provided to ensure that the look and feel can look at home on different Operating Systems, but likely extended to provide good look and feel alternatives which adapt GUI elements and support skinning too.

The main thing first is to finish the intended playlist functionality.

Project update and Mac GUI screenshot

Date: 2010.03.16 | Category: Playnode Infinity | Response: 0

The focus for this project has shifted from the web to the desktop platform. This follows on from earlier work on Windar (a Windows GUI and installer for Playdar) to provide a cross-platform playlist-oriented front-end for Playdar, and more.

Windar was written in C# but I’ve gone back to Java as I want the GUI to look good on all the main desktop environments. Just because its Java doesn’t mean it can’t look good.

Here’s a screenshot of the Mac version of Playnode.

Hello world

Date: 2010.01.10 | Category: Website | Response: 0

This website will provide a hub for Playnode projects.

Read more about Playnode on the About page.

Keep up to date with Playnode news with one or more of the following:

• Follow Playnode on Twitter.
• Subscribe to this blog using a feed reader such as Google Reader.
• Subscribe to the Playnode mailing list.