Songbird: The Open Music Player
Songbird is a great cross-platform multimedia player and a great contender for proprietary apps such Apple iTunes and Microsoft Windows Media Player. When we first tested Songbird, last year, the interface was a little bit rough and the black interface were not too much in our taste, but since the app just now available as an official 1.0 release candidate. We find it has indeed grown leap and bound.
from artist bios, lyrics, music store integration, and much more. First, It is good to know Songbird is built on Web oriented Mozilla technology, same technology used by Firefox. It is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux. The player offers now more flexility in the selection of user interface, including the iTunes look as seen below . Songbird uses XML User Interface Language (XUL) and Gecko rendering engine that powers Firefox.
While Songbird is very capable of importing your current media library and its customizable interface accommodates : Artist bios, Lyrics, Music store integration, etc..You should expect advanced functions such recognizing your iPod playlists, Music store integration are not yet ready for primetime as indicated by the hands-on review of Arstechnica.
With the user friendly interface, the add-on features (a la Firefox extension) and its openness, I am very happy to see Songbird is on the good track to deliver a very good foundation framework for a truly open source media player.
[Songbird via Arstechnica]
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