Amarok weathers its own storm of reactions

"It's our KDE 4.2," said Amarok developer Jeff Mitchell. He was referring to version 2.1 of the popular media player, including the recent 2.1.1 maintenance release. He was implying, too, that the Amarok 2.0's reception mirrored that of KDE 4, provoking hostile early reactions that were only quelled as later releases answered the worst of the complaints. It's an analogy that seems fully borne out by a hands-on look at 2.1.1's basic interface and customization features.

The analogy is to the hostile reception that KDE 4.0 received when released in January 2008. Despite warnings that the release was not intended for general use, distributions packaged KDE 4.0 as soon as possible. Almost immediately, users began complaining about the changes in the interface and the lack of features found in earlier releases. These complaints subsided only when the 4.1 and 4.2 releases re-introduced missing features and more customization, although you can still hear rumblings whenever KDE 4 is mentioned online.

"The development process of Amarok 2 has followed a similar path," said Mitchell. Like KDE, "We had visions for where we could go with Amarok, and a code base that had sprawled from Amarok's much more limited and simple beginnings and was in no shape to take us there. So, much like KDE 4, Amarok 2 was not a simple porting of Amarok to Qt4 and KDE4libs; it was an almost total rewrite."

A major part of this rewrite was a transition to the new technologies of KDE 4.0. The switch to Phonon, KDE's multimedia API, allowed Amarok to stop maintaining its own media engines and, in 2.1, to add a graphic equalizer to the settings dialogue. In much the same way, Amarok now includes an embedded version of Plasma, KDE's core desktop technologies. This change allows the context features in Amarok's middle pane — for instance, the lyrics and artist information drawn from the web — to be written as Plasma applets. The integration of such KDE 4 technologies improves performance and reduces the code base that needs to be maintained while adding new functionality to the KDE 4 technologies themselves.

In total, Amarok 2 added some 200,000 lines of code. Since neither the project, nor any distributions, packaged the pre-releases, Mitchell admitted that the additions were not thoroughly tested. However, the project decided to release in December 2008, mainly because "motivation really tends to falter when you develop with no end in sight. Releasing 2.0 invigorated us, since we could finally get out of our endless feature freeze and commit huge new chunks of functionality, [and] get more bug reports and patches sent in."

The downside of releasing 2.0 was a reception almost identical to that received by KDE 4.0 — a similarity that commenters picked up on almost immediately. If you do an Internet search, you will find no shortage of complaints about the change of interface from the previous 1.4 release. Complaints about a missing playlist editor, statistics, sound equalizer, and other features were almost as common.

This reception was not completely unexpected by the project, according to Mitchell. Released on 4 June 2009, version 2.1 was intended "to be our first user release," Mitchell explained. "So far, this prediction has come true. We, the developers, feel it is far more polished and that it is ready for general consumption; users have responded in kind, reversing the scads of negative 2.0 reviews with (as far as we've seen) generally very positive 2.1 reviews."

He admitted that the interface continues to receive complaints and might need work. On the whole, though, Mitchell described the Amarok team as already looking towards new developments, such as using Solid, KDE's device integration framework, for detecting portable media, and integrating with Strigi, KDE's desktop search daemon. Other upcoming features will include breadcrumb navigation and new context applets for YouTube and Flickr.

The new interface

For those who want to test Mitchell's assertions for themselves, Amarok 2.1.1 is already available for most major distributions and many minor ones. In many cases, though, you need to look outside the official repositories to find it. It is available, for example, from Launchpad for Kubuntu, and the Experimental repository for Debian.

Those used to the 1.4 Amarok window are likely to find the changes in the interface overwhelming at first. Rather than displaying sources and auxiliary information in a single pane on the left, Amarok 2.1.1 now spreads the same information over the first two panes on the left, leaving only the third for playlist tracks.

This layout is not ideal from one perspective. In the playlist, the artist and album are listed as a header, rather than repeated for each track, which can be inconvenient in a long list. Similarly, track details and collection sorting are available only from context menus that at first you might miss.

However, from another perspective, the layout removes unnecessary information while making it still available. I am assuming, of course, that most people are already familiar with the artist and album, and only occasionally want to look at cover art.

Moreover, the middle context pane, with its applets in tabs along the bottom, delivers far more information than 1.4, including lyrics and Wikipedia information. The applets are not always perfect — for example, if the Wikipedia applet hits a disambiguation page first, clicking the correct link opens it in your web browser rather than in Amarok. But the applets are welcome all the same, and with these additions, some information had to give way.

On the whole, I think that Amarok has prioritized the information correctly, even if you do risk occasionally overlooking a feature. Besides, if you are uninterested in the context information, you can always adjust the size of the panes so that the middle one is hidden and Amarok looks more as it did in version 1.4

Advanced and customizing features

One feature that you might overlook at first is the PopUp Dropper (PUD). If you drag a track from the collection pane to the playlist, PUD appears as the cursor moves across the middle pane. If you drop the track on Append to Playlist or Replace Playlist, that action is immediately carried out. However, you can also hover the cursor over More, and PUD's menu expands to reveal less common options. Although the feature may not be strictly necessary, it's a convenience that I wouldn't mind seeing in ordinary file managers — especially when using a small screen like those on a netbook, where it could eliminate the need to scroll.

Other features that are tidied away until you discover them expand Amarok's basic functionality. Depending on how your distribution ships Amarok, you might be able to enable more Internet Services from Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Internet Services. These services are more numerous and more varied than in version 1.4.

For still more variety, you can check Tools -> Script Manager to add extra features to the basic installation. The available scripts include one to to stream audio books from Librivox, as well as a service that lists Internet radio stations. Click the Get More Scripts button, and you can download additional scripts, such as local audio streams, as well as applets or extra functionality, such as a musical alarm and a random album player. Activating these scripts will generally require restarting Amarok.

A new feature in 2.1.1 is the ability to created biased playlists from a random collection. Using tracks' metatags, you can set the proportion of certain characteristics that you want. For example, you might want 25% of the playlist to include a certain artist, or 10% of a particular album. Alternatively, you might use the Fuzzy Bias feature so that the list includes only songs that are less three minutes long, or were released in a certain year. With such features, Amarok seems more customizable than ever.

In a nut shell

While some features from earlier releases are still missing in 2.1.1, whether you miss them is largely a matter of preference. Some might miss the setup wizard. Others might miss the ability to use a database other than MySQL, although, since the rest of KDE uses MySQL, the restriction seems natural enough when you consider the latest version's tighter integration into KDE. As for the ability to use a credit card to buy tracks from Magnatune, that is a service discontinued by Magnatune, not Amarok. Probably other features are missing as well, but, if there are any major ones, I failed to notice them in five days of living with the new release.

What I did notice was that the new interface contains more information, and makes controls more noticeable. An obvious example is the enlargement and movement of the basic playing controls to the upper left corner from the lower right.

I also appreciate the context information applets, and the way that advanced functionality and customization options are readily available, but not immediately obvious. With this arrangement, you can discover advanced features gradually, instead of being overwhelmed by complexity when you open the application for the first time.

Being asked to adjust to the unfamiliar is always difficult. Probably most users will have one or two complaints about the new Amarok. Mine are the notification window that pops up when a new track starts and Amarok does not have the focus, and the noticeable lag before the Stop button has an effect.

However, if you can put aside the preconceptions based on earlier versions, then you will probably conclude that Amarok's developers are right: With version 2.1.1, Amarok really has left most of its problems behind. Another release or two, and it should regain its former popularity, and relegate the often hostile reception of version 2.0 to a fading memory.