Dealing with Leopard Java Update 2

Those of you who use beaTunes on Leopard and installed the recent Java Update 2 probably have noticed that a couple of buttons as well as table headers look a little odd (behavior described here). Margins have changed and somehow the table headers seem to be painted twice. The latest beaTunes update should fix all these problems.

beaTunes 2 EA 7

I will make this a short one: EA7 offers a number of small, not so much noticeable, but nevertheless important improvements. Examples are next/previous buttons in the BPM tap dialog, a better algorithm for finding iTunes libraries on Windows and a number of UI changes/fixes. For (slightly) more info, check out the NOTES.txt file, which is part of every release.

Alright, here's the obligatory warning: Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions (even though we make a reasonable effort)
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

Just so that there is no doubt about it: EA7 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA7 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA7 (Windows)

Note for EA6 users

Actually, there is nothing noteworthy... Enjoy!

Updated looks

It's been only a week since the last Early Access release of beaTunes, but as there definitely won't be a release next week, I figured I go ahead and post an update now, so people won't get stranded with an expired EA release.

Today's EA6 release features a number of GUI updates and a new Leopard theme (available only on Leopard) that finally implements the unified toolbar look found in so many modern Mac apps. Thanks to Ken, who pointed out in his blog what should have been pointed out in TN-2196 in more detail. Namely, that apple.awt.brushMetalLook produces the unified toolbar look. Now I'm just waiting for Apple to fix JDialogs, which don't seem to respect the property...

Other changes are mostly bugfixes - including one important one for Windows users: If you choose to run more than one analysis task (e.g. color and bpm), the second one was not working in EA5. This is now fixed.

Alright, here's the obligatory warning: Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions (even though we make a reasonable effort)
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

Just so that there is no doubt about it: EA6 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA6 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA6 (Windows)

Note for EA5 users

Actually, there is nothing noteworthy... Enjoy!

beaTunes 1.2.5 released

We just released beaTunes 1.2.5. This release fixes a couple of Leopard UI issues. Furthermore the delayed commit progress dialog now refreshes correctly, the recently-added-songs logic was improved and unnecessary fallbacks to QuickTime are now avoided. Mac users should definitely update.

Enjoy!

Leopard UI issues

We and some of you have noticed that beaTunes' UI doesn't look just right on Leopard. Specifically, the table headers are blank and the inspection titles are unreadable. We have already fixed these issues, but the release is simply not out yet. It is planned for Wednesday, 11/14/07.

If you want to try out the current OS X development snapshot in which these issues are fixed before next Wednesday, please download it from here. And yes, please keep in mind, it's a development snapshot, not a real release.

beaTunes 1.2.3 features delayed commits

Yesterday we put a minor update to beaTunes on our website. It addresses three different issues:

• UI improvements
• Leopard compatibility
• Delayed inspection commit

UI improvements: Language names are no longer shown in the system language, but always in English. We also added the most important languages to the top of each language combobox, to make their selection easier. Furthermore, there were occasional issues with displaying the Get Info dialog correctly on systems that used very long genre names. This issue is fixed. Another small improvement: In the Get info dialog for multiple items, the checkboxes are now automatically selected, once the user enters anything in the corresponding field.

Leopard compatibility: It turned out that due to changes Apple made in the Applescript subsystem, beaTunes wasn't working on Leopard. We looked into these issues and solved them. So there shouldn't be a big surprise in October, when Leopard finally sees the light of day.

Delayed inspection commit: Some users suggested that beaTunes should wait with committing changes initiated in the inspection dialog until the dialog is closed. This, so the reasoning, should allow a more fluent inspection. We listened and implemented the desired delayed commit. It's enabled by default and can be turned off in the inspections preferences.

We hope this update makes your beaTunes experience even more fun.

Creating beaTunes UI Themes

Most of you know that with beaTunes 1.1 we introduced UI themes. This bit of functionality lets you change the background tile of the main beaTunes window - giving you a little bit of power over the look and feel of beaTunes as a whole.

Now, what most people don't know, is that you can even register your own tile images and have beaTunes load them. This is done through a plugin.

So for the geeks amongst you, this is how you create a background image plugin:

• Create a working directory
• Create a background tile image, save it in PNG format and place it into the working directory
• Create a subdirectory called META-INF
• In META-INF, create a file called plugin.xml
• This is what the content of plugin.xml should look like:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
  <plugins>
      <plugin class="com.tagtraum.beatunes.plaf.TiledBackgroundTheme">
          <property name="imagePath" value="YOUR_IMAGE.png"/>
          <property name="description" value="YOUR DESCRIPTION"/>
      </plugin>
      <!-- add more plugins here -->
  </plugins>

• Make sure you replace YOUR_IMAGE.png with the actual image name and YOUR DESCRIPTION with a fitting description
• In a terminal or shell window, cd to the working directory and execute the following command:
  

  jar cvf plugin.jar .

  This zips the files up into the file plugin.jar
• Place the newly created file plugin.jar into the plugin directory:
  Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.beaTunes\plugins
  OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/beaTunes/Plug-Ins/
  
• Restart beaTunes - the new theme should now show up in the general preferences

Please note that these instructions require the jar command to be properly installed, i.e. you have a Java Development Kit on your system with the PATH environment variable set, so that jar can be found. This is pretty much always the case on OS X - on Windows you might have to add jar manually to the PATH or simply use some Zip software like Winzip instead of jar to zip up the plugin.jar.

Inspired to create your own tile? We'd love to hear from you!

beaTunes 1.1.2 is out

We just did a minor update - mainly for the OS X version of beaTunes. Some of you were annoyed by the strange Command-Click behavior beaTunes exposed on OS X, when working with song tables. It took us some time, but we finally realized that this is a(nother) bug in Apple's Swing look and feel. So we filed a bug report and hacked a workaround. And since this bug is really annoying, we decided to quickly push the fix out as an update - even though this update hardly contains any other changes.

For Windows users this means, that you can pretty much skip this release, since it does not contain relevant fixes for you.

Key Ingredients

The bad news first: beaTunes 1.1 will not feature automatic tonal key detection.

However, we have made an effort to provide better support for harmonic mixing. Whenever you analyze an mp3 file, beaTunes 1.1 will check whether the ID3 tags contain any key data. If the key tag is present, it is read and copied into beaTunes' database. This means, it is also shown in the playlist views. This at least lets you take advantage of other tools' key detection.

Additionally, to allow DJ's to instantaneously see whether two keys match, beaTunes now renders keys in the colors defined by the Camelot Easymix system. In fact, when you hover with the mouse over a key, the tooltip even shows you the Camelot keycode (e.g. C Major = 8B).

How Elegant!

Bored by applications that always look plain gray? Well, we've got something for you! With the upcoming beaTunes 1.1 you will be able to easily change beaTunes' appearance by selecting a new background tile.

Simply go to the General Preferences and choose another theme. beaTunes will come with a couple of pre-made ones, but the help files will contain instuctions for creating your own. Basically, you only have to jar up your images and a plugin deployment descriptor and drop the jar file in the right location.

Analysis ETA

One of the declared goals for beaTunes 1.1 is to improve the overall user experience.
So far, beaTunes has not given an estimated time for processing all tasks in the analysis queue. Nevertheless, many people mistook the time shown in the status label (at the very bottom of the main screen, circled in the image to the right) of the analysis queue to be the estimated processing time. In fact, in beaTunes 1.0, that's the time it would take to play all songs that are in the queue.
But we agree: It would make a whole lot more sense, if beaTunes displayed the estimated processing time there.
So from beaTunes 1.1 on, that's what it'll do.

Another improvement for beaTunes 1.1 will be the number of items left in the queue, displayed just behind the label 'Analysis Queue' in the source panel on the left of the main window (also circled in the image above). This will make it easier for you to see, how much work is still in the queue - regardless of whether you are currently looking at the queue or some playlist.