Amarok/Archives/Release:1.4Beta3

amaroK "Fast Forward" 1.4-beta3 Unleashed

The amaroK team brings you, fresh from the oven, the much anticipated "Fast Forward" 1.4 beta3 (this time it's not an April Fool joke!). Beta3 ships with many bugfixes for issues picked up by our thorough beta2 testers, and is the most stable release to date, and also contains some extra features to bring amaroK closer to 1.4 final. As always, you can make note of any problems at the amaroK 1.4 known issues page after filing a bug report at bugs.kde.org so we can squash them before the final version is released.

FEATURES

• Our artist team is well on its way to completing amaroK's very own personal icon theme. Want to help? Join the artist team - mail [email protected]
• Extended Podcast information (including images) is now properly retrieved, used in the playlist, and displayed in the context browser
• The Filebrowser now has a toolbar button to change to the directory of the currently playing song
• Metadata of Ogg/Vorbis audio streams are now also shown when using the xine engine
• amaroK now supports various new XML playlist formats, like XSPF and SMIL

CHANGES

• Podcast support has been dramatically improved -- for example, podcasts are no longer submitted to last.fm, they now show up in context browser, and overall code is cleaner and more efficient.
• Engine support has been streamlined - amaroK now only supports xine, Helix, GStreamer-0.10 and NMM, but these engines are working better than ever. However, we still need a maintainer for the GStreamer-0.10 engine - mail [email protected]
• Lot of development happening on the generic media device support, still not roK solid, but vastly better than previous versions.
• Xine-Engine has been fixed -- specifically, memory usage bugs when crossfading, and the equalizer code

You can obtain the whole ChangeLog here.

Status Updates

amaroK Gear Contest

Revelinux Gear, provider of the famous amaroK shop, extended it's amaroK Gear Contest till end of May. By buying a fancy amaroK T-Shirt in the Revelinux Gear shop and adding a photo of you wearing it you can win a cool black amaroK T-Shirt. Even if you don't win, you will have shown how much you love the world's greatest audio player. More info here.
Special note from the development squad: "DON'T LET EEAN WIN!"

#amarok.es

We are proud of our new spanish amaroK support channel, #amarok.es, which can be accessed on irc.freenode.net IRC Server. In this channel you can find personalized support in spanish language, as well as kind people who will help you to solve your problems, give you suggestions to pump up and make your amaroK experience funnier and better. If you are looking for answers, want to meet other amaroK users or learn more about this great audio player, and all this in your native language, then drop in to #amarok.es and say "hola" to Enr1x and lfranchi!

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TODO:

• write a draft
  • mention new spanish channel (#amarok.es)
  • mention the amarok gear contest (http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php/Users_in_amaroK_Gear)
• polishing
• create beta3 known issues section
• generate changelog for linking
• approval process
• search image
  • motion blur party (1 / Enr1X)
  • speeding downhill also good for airborne ;) I like this one (dangle's alternative pick)
  • barnstorming
  • motion blur, though very abstract
  • motion blur, but not as abstract i like this one more than the other motion blur ones :) --lfranchi
  • ok, changed my vote :) THis one's the best motion blur I've seen so far (that's CC licenced, anyway) --Dangle
• prepare image
• upload image
• upload article