Amarok/Archives/Release:1.4Beta1(dot.kde)
Fresh from the amaroK development squad, comes the first beta release of amaroK 1.4, the 'Fast Forward' series. This generation has a lot of shiny new features and eye-candy. amaroK development has literally been in fast forward mode since November, the changelog is actually one of the longest in project's history.
Hot New Features
Since work started on amaroK 1.4, several features have been repeatedly requested, via the amaroK forum, IRC and mailing lists, as being essential to amaroK users.
That said, amaroK now includes the ability to tag (and add to the collection) WMA, MP4/AAC and RealMedia (RA,RV,RM) files.
Another long-standing item from the wishlist is gapless playback, and this has finally been implemented, along with audio CD support (and CDDB lookups) for the popular xine engine.
By far the biggest change in amaroK 1.4 is the reworked media device system. Apple® iPod® support has been greatly improved (thanks to libgpod), and iRiver®/ifp and generic media devices are now supported, although the latter is still a little unstable.
Along with these major changes, amaroK's user interface has been cleaned up and simplified, and much work has been done under the hood to improve performance and stability.
The team now asks everybody to hunt and squash bugs, for ones own enjoyment as well as make 1.4 even more stable than 1.3 already was. A list of known issues is available.
For more information how to help and where to get amaroK 1.4 beta1 see amarok.kde.org.
TODO
Make the article usableTell somewhere that a shorten feature list is available at ako (and link to the news at ako)- Final polishing