Exaile 3.3.0 released!

After a very long time we are very excited to announce that it is finally here: Exaile 3.3, code name “jump”. This release brings hundreds of fixes as well as a lot of new features.

The version

For this release the Exaile developers have agreed to finally drop the leading „0“ which has haunted us for a long time without apparent reason. And the sheer amount of changes which have gone into this release are reason enough for the version “jump” to 3.3. But aside from that our version scheme will not change, so don’t expect version 21 anytime soon like with some browsers. ;-)

Fixes, improvements and lots of new features

A lot of bugs have been fixed which have partially existed since ages. Aside from that improvements have happened throughout the whole player. And last but not least the new release spurs a considerable amount of new features. Among the most notable changes are:

General:

  • Lots of threading issues which resulted in hangs during playback and upon startup
  • Sanitize passwords from stream URLs to keep them from being displayed, submitted and stored
  • Asynchronous cover fetching
  • Escape XML-critical characters for ASX and XSPF playlist export
  • Improved import of media from drag drops
  • Tracks and playlist import from and export to arbitrary locations (like network locations)
  • Tracks are moved to the Trash by default if possible instead of directly deleting them
  • Lots of improvements for running Exaile on Microsoft Windows including an installer
  • Various other small changes to make things behave more natural

GUI:

  • Revamped cover chooser (spinner as loading indicator¹, thumbnail bar, cover details like source and size) and cover manager (better threading, faster, more progress indication, facelift)
  • Implement automatic scrolling during drag operations
  • Facelift and small improvements for the track properties dialog
  • New button in the playlist notebook¹ (click for new playlist, drop something on it to pre-fill the new playlist)
  • Ability to add arbitrary markers to the playback progress bar for jumping
  • Ability to restore closed playlist tabs
  • Completely new, provider-based menu system, some places not yet ported (allows for easy customization and extension of menus like e.g. rating and Last.fm Love/Unlove menu items)
  • Playlist columns ported to the provider system
  • Comments tag in the track properties and as playlist column
  • New playlist column: scheduled playback time of tracks
  • Add icons to the preferences dialogs and categories to the plugins list
  • Option to hide the main track info pane or only the cover widget within

Playlists:

  • Completely rewritten playlist API (cleaner, more flexible and extensible, move and copy tracks arbitrarily between playlists)
  • Intelligent playlist default naming (no duplicates, always takes free name slots)
  • Allow for randomizing a selection of tracks instead of only the full playlist
  • Playlist importers/exporters ported to the provider system (more flexible, easily extendable with additional formats)
  • Enhanced playlist recognition upon import (fast type detection, file extension and slow type detection)
  • Support relative paths in playlist import/export

DBus:

  • Method/CLI option to export the current playlist
  • DBus service activation enabled
  • Added method for pausing
  • Added method/CLI option for formatted playback queries

Tag handling:

  • Support albumartist for MP3/MP4
  • Properly read tags from files with non-ASCII names
  • Properly read all available covers embedded in tags and keep their information
  • Proper handling of an arbitrary amount of covers embedded in tags (cover fetching and track properties)

Plugins:

  • A-B Repeat: repeat segment of a track by placing two markers on the playback progress bar
  • BPM Counter: manually set BPM per track
  • Group Tagger: add custom labels to tracks and gather tracks by these labels (via smart playlist filters)
  • History: keep history of played tracks and export them to a playlist
  • Inhibit Suspend: prevent suspend on e.g. notebooks during playback
  • Last.fm Loved Tracks: love/unlove tracks, see loved state of tracks
  • Main Menu Button: moves the main menu into a single Chrome-like button
  • Multimedia keys for Windows
  • MusicBrainz Covers: adds MusicBrainz as cover source option
  • OSD: formerly core, now completely rewritten with new options
  • Preview Device: allows playing audio over a secondary device, useful for DJs
  • Wikipedia: information about the current artist
  • Various fixes and improvements for other plugins

As usual, you can browse the full list including all details on Launchpad. We hope you like the new release as much as we do. Don’t wait any longer and download 3.3 from our Launchpad downloads page. The Windows installer will be added today or tomorrow.

You are welcome to drop comments on #exaile or report bugs or feature requests. We always strive to improve Exaile even further to make it one of the lightest and most usable players out there.

Enjoy version 3.3.0 and watch out for even more hot stuff in future releases!

¹ Requires GTK 2.20 and PyGTK 2.22