I never really understood the attraction for huge UI on music players. Hello? it’s music, it’s for listening. Why do I need to have an interface that stretches from one edge of my monitor to the other? I don’t know who started the trend but now every media player comes with the same horrendous, logic-defying big skins… even Winamp. But at least Winamp has the ability to collapse unused sections and shrink the player to the bare minimum. But not iTunes.
Again, most media players can be controlled from the taskbar. Actions like skipping songs, using the seek bar, adjusting volume etc can be performed without opening the main application. iTunes too has a mini-player but the controls it supports is limited to only the Play/Previous/Next buttons. What iTunes need is a small compact player that isn’t intrusive, something like the iTuner.
iTuner is a companion to iTunes, that resides on the system tray and manifests itself as a small, sleek player floating just above the tray. This mini version of the iTunes player packs a bunch of features and controls like global keyboard control, lyric discovery and display, track dashboard, playback control, and library maintenance – all of which can be accessed by the system tray resident iTuner.
You can also right click on the tray icon and access the various controls via a menu.
iTuner Features
- System Tray icon showing the current player state: play or pause
- Notify popup showing current track information, title, artist, album
- Detailed track information with quick link to storage folder on disk
- Indication of source location, standard music library, movies, TV shows, podcasts, radio
- Customizable global hot key control of iTunes playback
- Basic playback controls including, next/prev track, play/pause, volume, position, rating, and shuffle
- Automatic lyric discovery using multiple providers
- Quick access to view lyrics of current track
- Basic track information editor to customize title, artist, and album
Library management features are coming, and if implemented would make a complete and the most compact iTunes player ever.
Library features are now available along with a Playlist Export feature.
ReplyDeleteAre you fluent in English even though it's not your primary native language? Do you know what a .NET resource file is and how to modify one? Then you may be the perfect person to help translate and localize this project. I'm looking for a few great translators for this project. You'll need access to Visual Studio 2010 and should have experience translating from English to your preferred language. Please see the translation page at http://ituner.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Translation&referringTitle=Documentation
ReplyDeleteiTuner V1.7 Released! – A small step for iTuner, a giant leap for music lovers everywhere... iTuner can now import playlists. This will create a new playlist and optionally import new media files. This supports all playlist formats generated by the Export feature.
ReplyDeleteiTuner can now automatically download album artwork and display artwork on the popup tracker window.