After the video-clip applet for amarok context-view, here comes the Photos applet or more exactly the Flickr applet as it just fetch picture from Flickr for now … It works basically in the same way than the video-clip applet. Every song change, it will retrieve some info using the nice Flickr api and present them in amarok Context View. A Plasma::Animator is used to create a nice animation just on mouse over and make the photos slide from left to right.
Two videos showing it in action. The second one also shows the video-clip applet:
How do you like it ? I’ve planned to add two others ways of visualization : one showing the photo one by one with some fading between transition and the other one automatically scrolling from left to right.
That’s all for the photos widget, any feedback/idea/reclamation welcome 
_____________________________
- The video widget received some minor update, like the ability to grab youtube HQ video, a configuration interface, a right click context menu (yepee), the current info and the playlist now show the downloaded thumbnail of the video when the video is played
- As Nikolaj has shown in his last post, the wikipedia applet has been revamped and now have the equivalent functionality as in 1.4. Navigation inside the applet, switch to album or title page, and a global language configuration
- The current applet also get some minor change, like the ability to drag’n drop an image from a file/web browser to change the cover. There are also now some automated scrolling on mouse over for the artist, album or title text when the current track applet is too small.
That’s all for now …
Tags: Amarok
June 24, 2009 at 6:52 pm |
hi,
*really* nice!! nice to see that amarok matures that fast! really hot! one question: how do amarok play youtube videos? via html5 or does it need a flashplayer etc.??
best regards & keep up the bombastic work!
June 25, 2009 at 11:31 am |
Hi,
No it doesn’t need flash, the source video is downloaded and rendered in a Phonon::VideoWidget, so you won’t need to install anything else.
-Simon
June 24, 2009 at 7:13 pm |
How about adding a Video support for Amarok and get it full featured multimediaplayer, than just the music player?
Just add there tab/switch to choose Music and video library and you get all done right away. Videos could be played on context view or own player window. Then just add “miniplayer” mode like Mplayer and you get nice full featured videoplayer.
Amarok is already stepping very much over Internet browser, Videoplayer and even filemanager.
June 24, 2009 at 7:17 pm |
That’s cool. Are the audio/video applets available from amarok trunk or do I need to check somewhere else?
June 24, 2009 at 8:21 pm |
Awesome work! Thank you!
June 24, 2009 at 10:19 pm |
yes, they are available in trunk.
@tommy:
amarok is first and foremost a music player, and the video features are designed to enhance and expand it’s ability in that regard. amarok can’t do everything perfectly, we are much better off doing one thing very well. not to mention the fact that the essential glue that holds together everything in amarok is metadata about your collection—tags. and there is no standardized tagging system for videos. 99% of videos have no tags at all! managing them is quite a challenge.
June 24, 2009 at 10:37 pm |
Wow, really great work! Works nicely.
Maybe 2 suggestions:
1. on track change: if artist stays the same on track-change, how about showing the next 10 photos instead of doing nothing?
2. (optionally) open browser with link to clicked photo on flickr, for fullview and comments etc..
Many thanks!
June 25, 2009 at 11:28 am |
1. yep i will probably make that change or at lest allow the user to fetch/download more picture than 10 for now.
2. yep
June 25, 2009 at 12:57 am |
That’s amazing. I’m really happy, since a very long time (from my point of view) Amarok Context view has been worthless, now it’s really starting to shine, this mixed with other tweaks (RIP: Sidebartabs and the new ability to rearrange amarok gui) are really making Amarok 2 series rock again.
Congratulations for the amazing work!
June 25, 2009 at 5:18 am |
While I still love amarok, I wonder when it will become a whole OS… Meanwhile, the playlist is still too small and I can’t get rid of the central context view…
June 25, 2009 at 10:09 am |
Well,
in trunk you can change the position of the context view (for example make it a tab next to the browsers (more or less like it was in 1.4)).
And you can (already in 2.1) reconfigure the playlist to change it to your needs (you can configure it to look quite similar to the 1.4 one)
June 25, 2009 at 1:07 pm |
lol….
June 25, 2009 at 5:41 am |
Great job!
June 25, 2009 at 4:11 pm |
Isn’t it funny that both beautification, feature addition to context view as well as ability to hide context view appear at same time
Well, I am really amazed at the way various components in amarok are being integrated. Congratulations to all amarok developers
June 25, 2009 at 8:12 pm |
nice work,
it would be great if not always the same set of images were shown, does the flicker api allow to get random images for a keyword or let the applet select randomly some of all the available pictures?
also a possibility to view a image on click in a external browser would make sense.
thanks!
June 26, 2009 at 9:53 pm |
Hi !
Okay I will go for the simple click open external browser and fetch some more songs, or try to randomize them !
Simon
June 26, 2009 at 6:29 pm |
Great work! A suggestion for the video applet:
I think that no one wants the video to be added to the playlist, mainly because while in the case of the music you can have it in the background, in a video that would make nonsense. At least I, when i click a video, I want to see it at the very moment i click it.
So i think it would be better to pause the music when a video is clicked, start the video right away and resume the music after the video is finished. Of course you could add the video to the playlist with a right click
June 26, 2009 at 9:51 pm |
Well, some people wants to add the video in the playlist, and it’s the usual behavior of amarok, everything is added to the playlist
Anyway, when you double click on the image, its added in the playlist and played directly, and you can manually resume the music after
June 26, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Yes, everything is added to the playlist, but until now it was only music. It just feels odd for me to have videos in the playlist waiting to be played while i surf the web and do stuff
) and leave the videos as a mere context addition.
I also see the videos like a context future, similar to the wikipedia or the lyrics applets wich dont interfere with music, they are just a plus if you want. In the same line I think that amarok should still be a just-music player (and the best one by the way
That’s just my vision
July 5, 2009 at 2:52 pm |
Hi! First of all thanks for your great work! Videos and Flickr applets are terrific.
About video applet, i think it would be great to have the possibility to watch the video (without volume) while the current song is playing. For example: right click on the video –> watch now and the video starts without volume and without stopping the music.
Because sometimes i like to watch video of my favorite artists while i’m listening to their cds.
Another great improvement would be the possibility to manual search video from youtube but i think it would be quite complex and maybe beyond a media player purpose.
July 13, 2009 at 8:22 am |
Hi! Gut work. I´m happy we can enjoy so many new options and tools. Thanks so much for the good work.
I´m already using the playing music and video tools and i´m very satisfied.
Thanks!