Updating Feathers for Songbird 1.4.1
Introduction
Songbird 1.4.1 introduced a new Feather, Purple Rain. At first glance it may not seem noticably different, but in response to user feedback, we've completely revisted much of the graphical elements. The major changes involve the way Media Views are toggled and how display panes are managed. The basic philosophy behind Purple Rain (and it will continue to evolve in future releases as we have more time to hone and iterate on it) is that Songbird is, first and foremost, a media player - NOT a web browser. You'll see us move in this direction more. While Songbird will obviously continue to browse the web, we intend to optimise the experience for media playback (both locally and remote), while generally dissuading general web browser usage (Firefox, Chrome, etc. will always be a better web browser than Songbird, to be honest).
Previously display panes could be both expanded/collapsed (using the splitters) as well as shown/hidden (using the display pane buttons in the statusbar). This seemed to be a continual cause of user confusion, so we've moved towards larger splitters with built in visible grippy elements. Display panes are now simply expanded/collapsed using one click grippies or dragged down manually using the splitters.
Along those lines, we simplified the way media views are selected by moving the list/filter views to dedicated toggle buttons. Third party views continue to be available via a drop down menu. For future releases, we are looking towards making an API available to allow third party media views to have dedicated toggle buttons as well.
In line with our move to optimise Songbird for media playback rather than web browsing, we made a few other changes:
- Removed the servicepane statusbar. This removes the ability to toggle visiblity of the servicepane. Users will always be able to easily jump to services, etc. made available in the servicepane without having to figure out where the servicepane went (it previously auto-hid for webpages). This also removed the new playlist button which we've replaced with a servicepane node under the Playlists node.
- Removed the concept of bookmarks. (If users really desire this, they can install the Songbird Bookmarks add-on)
- Simplified the servicepane hierarchy:
- Concerts, 7Digital, and other services should now be consolidated under the Services node.
- Radio services continue to be under a Radio node.
Creating New Purple Rain Feathers
This continues to be as simple as installing the Songbird Developer Tools add-on and using the Feather Creation wizard.
Updating Existing Feathers
You can take one of two approaches here:
- Take your existing Gonzo-based Feather, and copy over Purple Rain CSS rules. If your Feather defines custom layout in XUL, then you'll need to propagate those layout changes too.
- Create a new Purple Rain Feather, and copy over your Gonzo images/elements/rules into it.
The easiest route is probably the latter.
Importing Purple Rain Changes to your Gonzo-based Feather
A. You can upgrade your Gonzo based feather to the full Purple Rain base. I would recommend this path if you already customized your feather more extensively and don't want to lose the work you have already done (You did more than just global find-and-replace's to change colors in your bird's css. Feathers like Ne+, Focus, YABS would be candidates for this route):
- Upgrade to the purplerain base: (Change "gonzo" to "purplerain" in your install.rdf and globalImport.css)
- Merge all new and changed images to your skin folder (Download: NewImages.zip). It includes only new images and images that have changed their dimension are renamed to "image_2.png" (so you can update them from your old ones before you overwrite them). The zip archive contains new images from 1.4 and 1.4.1.
- Upgrade your css files. Find the differences here. It looks daunting at first, but it shouldn't take too long since close to a quarter of it is just color changes(which you can ignore of course).
B. You could also keep your Gonzo base, but upgrade to some of the new features in Purple Rain, such as the new display panes. We'll try to cover a few of the high level changes, and hopefully Feather developers that take this route can fill in details.
- Download the NewImages.zip.
- If you defined custom layout XUL files (not common), then you'll want to compare the
chrome/content/xul/mainplayer.xulandminiplayer.xullayout files. You'll need to update your displaypane splitters to be the new sb-displaypane-splitter element and propagate the removal of the displaypane management buttons. - You'll need new images for the list & filter view media view buttons.(colors.css-L188)
- You'll need new "thick" images for the display pane splitters.(feathers.css-L757) (colors.css-L383)
Importing Gonzo Elements to a new Purple Rain Feather
This should be fairly straight-forward... keep in mind that we changed sizes for many elements, notably:
- Player control buttons are all the same size now (for both main and mini player)
- We've done away with thumb grippies on the volume and seekbar sliders
- Display pane splitters/grippies are completely new and different sizes. Previously they inherited the
sb-smart-splitterrules, now they have their ownsb-displaypane-splitterrules. - You'll need new images for the list & filter view media view buttons.
- Many CSS rules that changed are in the
chrome/content/bindingsdirectory.
- Tag page
- What links here
| File | Size | Date | Attached by | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | gonzo-look.css No description | 2.93 kB | 20:52, 12 Dec 2009 | mpurses | Actions | |
| | NewImages.zip New and Changed Images for 1.4 and 1.4.1 | 284.47 kB | 18:39, 25 Dec 2009 | mpurses | Actions |
| Picture 1.png Purple Rain Screenshot | 359.63 kB | 15:45, 12 Dec 2009 | stevel | Actions | |
| Images 1 | ||
|---|---|---|
 Purple Rain ScreenshotPicture 1.png | ||
