Farewell GrooveOff

As most of you already know, Grooveshark closed its service so #GrooveOff, after two years of honorable service ;) isn't working anymore. What's now? I admit it: currently don’t have specific plans for GrooveOff future. With this short post I want to thanks all users who liked this application, translators and donors.

GrooveOff Turns One! (well... sort of)

Hi everybody,

time goes fast and more than a year passed from first release of GrooveOff.

It was a good year for it: a lot of downloads, positive reviews, some requests, new localizations (we have passed 10) and very few bugs :D So, after a year, I think it is the right moment to give it some love.

Ok, let's start with the very first image of GrooveOff 0.2.0:

GrooveOff main window

As you notice, it is not a revolution. Let's start from cosmetics changes:

• a new icon set for main interface
• new animation for current playing track (as we used to in mobile applications)
• redesigned player area

Probably some of you already recognized it: the icon set comes from Amarok. I expanded it designing new icons.

The player is the area that changed the most from version 0.1. Now it looks like a familiar audio player. Back/next track buttons, album cover and audio properties of the playing song are all new. Furthermore, it is now possible to rearrange downloaded tracks with a simple drag&drop.

These new media player capabilities are coupled with a new feature: save and restore session. This new option is default enabled in settings; now when you close GrooveOff the current download list is preserved and loaded on next start. It is also possible to save failed/canceled downloads for next try/resume.

A new feature of GrooveOff 0.2.0, and requested by a good number of users, is batch downloading. In author/album filters area there is a new button:

New "Download all tracks" button

My suggestion is to use it carefully, avoiding accidentally queueing hundreds of tracks ;)

Continuing, it's turn of a new layout that flanks Compact and Wide ones: Mini Player layout; you can enable it from the View menu:

New "Mini Player" layout

This layout is very minimal: search fields, result and download lists are hidden in favor of listen mode. Menu bar is replaced by a compact menu from which manage songs in playlist:

Compact menu with Playlist

I also added Mpris support, so that you can control GrooveOff from one of the applets provided by your Desktop or, why not, from your mobile device:

Kde's Now Playing plasmoid

Kdeconnect remote

With this new version you can customize mp3 file names:

Mp3 file name editor

Just drag labels from the lower field to the upper one, in the desired position, and complete eventually with separators and/or spacers. Default scheme is that in the picture: downloading a song will create author and album folders, when required, resulting in a more organized library.

Version 0.2.0 is the first release with external contribution. User Bas added search by playlist id number:

Grooveshark playlist search

So you can use the web interface to build a playlist and later download all tracks you included.

And finishing, now GrooveOff is Qt5 ready so if your distro provides all required packages you may opt for it (be sure that repository contains phonon and a phonon backend compiled agains qt5).

Qt5 version of GrooveOff

That's all for 0.2.0. I just want to conclude thanking people at transifex: JAKSON, dglent, maxlath, fri, dagsoftware, Sema1011, antiparvos, alexgabilondo, lvdota.

The source code can be downloaded from openDesktop:

http://opendesktop.org/content/show.php?content=158258

Pre-build binary packages are merit of OpenSUSE Build System.

If you have a recent distro (Archlinux, Fedora 20, xUbuntu 14.04, OpenSUSE Factory) you may prefer installing grooveoff-qt5.

If you want to contribute with a translation I recommend join the team at transifex.com:

https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/grooveoff/

If you found a bug, report it on github's issue page:

https://github.com/gcala/grooveoff/issues

Cheers.

---

Presenting GrooveOff

Hello everyone! I haven't blogged in a while but today I like to announce the new, spare time, application: GrooveOff. Let's start with an introductive image:

GrooveOff is an unofficial client for grooveshark.com. With it you can search its huge database (thanks to a public api) for artists, songs and albums and save them on disk for offline playing. It provides easy to use filters by artists and albums. As in my other applications, there are few options to struggle with:

• two layouts:
• wide
• compact
• performance  tweaks:
• download covers
• limit search results
• privacy:
• search history
• save folder

I embedded also a minimal player for songs preview/listening so you may decide to keep/reject them.

The application is founded upon Qt toolkit but I did my best to let GrooveOff feel native in each desktop environment. Look at the following screenshots:

This is the first public release so expect some bug/glitch, hoping not too annoying.

Thanks to Opensuse Build Service I can provide ready-to-install binary packages for major distros:


You can find source code at the following address:

http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php?content=158258

or get development code from github.

Report any issue to github page; suggestions/wishes are welcome.

If you want to add a translation use this transifex page.

A great thanks to +Gaetano Salerno for testing the application on a bunch of distros.



Disclaimer:
GrooveOff is not affiliated with Grooveshark™ and has not been reviewed or officially approved by Grooveshark.com. The author is not responsible for any violations this application does to Grooveshark's TOS. The author is not related to Grooveshark™ in any way! Support the Artists You Like by Buying Their Music.

Presenting Pacman Log Viewer

Pacman Log Viewer is a tool used to inspect pacman log file, in particular it lists installed, removed and upgraded packages letting you to filter by package name and/or date.

A common use case is after a problematic update when many files are involved and we do not much care about applied changes.

This utility works only in Archlinux and derivative and requires the QT toolkit.

You can find this new nice app at this address.

Have fun.


EDIT: Created pkgbuilds for archlinux and chakra community repos:

aur: http://bit.ly/IxHeKU
ccr: http://bit.ly/IxGWUk

Presenting ApperURL

Presenting ApperURL

The apper protocol, or apperurl, is a very simple way to install a software package from a web browser.

On computers where apperurl is enabled, clicking on a special type of link on a web page starts the installation of a package available in the package repositories of this computer.

For example, from a web page, when a Archlinux/Chakra user clicks on the link apper://packageexample, the apperurl protocol will launch the package manager to propose the installation of the package called "packageexample" from the repositories available on the computer.

Please note that apperurl is not aimed at replacing the current system of repositories and package manager. It is a complementary method.

ApperURL requires Apper installed on the machine.

The package apperurl is actually available in testing repo of Chakra Linux.

After installing apperurl, close and reopen your browser, come back to this page and try clicking on the following images.

Tomahawk
The social media player. A Music Player App written in C++/Qt










Choqok
 A Twitter/identi.ca/laconica client for KDE









Marble
A Virtual Globe and World Atlas that you can use to learn more about Earth.








Quassel
A modern, cross-platform, distributed IRC client