Notices

Beware! If you have extra themes installed, make sure to update them too.

Hi Everyone, so one more milestone was reached, and the packages are already on the repositories. Please point your applications manager to the update section and put it to test!

News for developers, Today we will also upload the file with the binary build of Canola for the desktop linux to be used as testing environment. It plays everything, and will work flawlessly on at least Ubuntu Linux. To guarantee a fully working testing place, you can also use an Ubuntu Live CD in VMware. (this is also the way for Mac and Windows Users)

If you are a theme maker, you can also download the example style sheet, and compile the theme in the testing environment for your personal test. As themes requires a probably complicated (for you theme maker) debian package creation, we are setting up a webserver to do that for you.

Youtube is updated, and uploaded to the Addons sections make sure you also update this plugin.

Last.fm is available today, so please check the Add ons, section!
Warning : As most probably known, theres not a full proof way to protect the Last.fm password, so you are warned that we are not encrypting/obfuscating your password (just like a lot of maemo applications do) and it's clear that you agree with that if you download and instal the Last.fm plugin. Our policy for that is being open, so Last.fm source is also going to be available on the website.

We need testers for : Experimental Kinetic List : As commented several times by myself (handful) on the ITT forum, we were always searching for ways of improving the list and making it better with less accidental clicks. So we did some changes to an experimental list implementation and we want to provide for those with list problems, and also for some with no list problems, because it's a very sensitive component in Canola UI. So if you know how to become root and place a couple of .pyo files on some folder please drop me a line at handful AT gmail.

Finally, apart from the changelog bellow a lot of bugs were fixed, even some nasty ones like the Mplayer taking over the keys on the video playing screen and we are really waiting for more feedback.

Better third-party plugin support: More API available for third-party plugin development.
Better handling of large titles in titlebar.
Fix during cover change.
Sort files inside "Browse by Folder".
Show current time during seek.
Fixed bugs in video player.
Ability to refresh podcast feeds manually.
Ability to select where downloaded contents go.
Smooter animation in the lists and sub menus.
General theme improvements.
Allow more podcast feeds.
Support compressed feeds and request them by default.
Better handle out of space.
Show more normalized download velocity and time remaining.
Various fixes in network handling in Podcast.
Restart downloads when podcast plugin is loaded.
Make it possible to preview the podcast description in the list.
Make it possible to read the feed description while listening to the podcast episode.
Remove episodes from "Podcast: New Episodes" when listened to or deleted.
Show the podcast feed title in the player as album and not the parent title.
Ogg support for the Scanner is back.


Unfortunately Out of beta8, but on advanced stage:

Playlist creation (on-the-move) + Playlist saving and other related features
Youtube paging capabilities for the search results (to allow more results to be browsed)
UPNP support
PNG thumbnail support still missing
Full hardware key mapping support

Known Issues in this Release

Don't set the download folder to a non-existant disk. It will not work, it will spin forever on Internet Radio and Photocast
Icon for last.fm on Red Theme is missing (using basic one)
Podcast "new ball" is coming back when you delete a already listened podcast.
Last.fm will scrobbling 2 times if you listen to more than 50% and then rewind the music.

Before asking question please take a look in the "using canola guide"
For more info, please visit the Internet Tablet Talk Canola Forum

Hi Marcelo.

First feedback on beta8:
My installation procedure & feedback:

1. installed canola beta8
2. added all the video, audio & photo folders
3. went to "multiple album entries
it said "scanning, and within 1 sec, Canola died (completely; as if by forcekill)
4. I restarted; everything worked perfectly, and I combined a multiple album.
5. tried to login to last.fm. It said that my system time was not ... There was not enough space available to write the entire error message (to be fixed)
I presume that the error was that a long time ago, I set my homecity to London, yet the time was Montreal's (5hr difference). Afterwards, I set up a calendar, and if I change my locale, the calendar would switch accordingly. this has nothing to do with Canola, yet the last.fm plugin won't let me login.
after this, I changed my locale, spent about an hour retyping my calendar, and went back to canola testing. This did solve the problem with last.fm

Quick note on this problem: I did not have ANY problems with logging in from Vagalume. first time that it requires me to change the system time.

I tried to reproduce the button disappearance... without any success. Congratulations!
About this: the lack of the "menu" button in the bottom right corner in last.fm is normal or a bug? Oh, and is there a way to say "love" or "ban" in last.fm? i'd expect it to be in the lower right menu... also, do you have the option to save to disk from last.fm? menu needed!
Another note about last.fm: for the "next" button, I need to double-click on the button. Not a real problem, just need to keep this in mind.
Also, you say that
I cannot neither rewind, not got back in last.fm
Edit: last.fm does not automatically go to the next track. it freezes at -00:01, and I have to click for the next track manually.

Back to the youtube "freeze" i mentioned about previously:
When I had last.fm playing, I opened the youtube plugin and was quite impressed that the music did not stop. I clicked on a search, selected one video, and before it started loading, clicked back (wrong selection). The result of this action was a "frozen" youtube: I CAN scroll; i cannot play any of the videos. When I click on any video, it becomes highlighted, yet does not open. When clicked on the back button (both screen & hardware), nothing happens. when clicked on the middle hardware button on n800 (how's it called?), it brings me back to the "home" menu of Canola. If I select youtube again, instead of the menu, my search's results open right away, with the problem just described. I'll check tomorrow from the command line to see if I can give more info on this.

Also, it's a great addition the "browse by folder" section for local music. specially for someone whose audio isn't properly tagged (like mine)


Another note that I cannot classify as a bug: power consumption. when I open canola, for a second, I get the message that my n800 is charging (although it said that the battery was full 5 min ago, and I did not unplug it). half a second after, it says that the battery is full [again]. is this due to an increase in CPU power (Canola was launched from complete rest), or is it something else?

More updates in a few days (will be out of town this weekend, without internet, I think)

Ilia

Hi illiaden, I already forwarded you bugs to the person who's responsible for the code in Last.fm and Youtube. He will try to fix the issues, and as they are separated plugins maybe they are released before beta9.

Sorry for the last.fm thing. It's our first release, and for sure we will not be nearly as good as vagalume. Only feedback + bug fixing + features will make us improve to be as nice as them BUT :
The ban / love buttons are there. Just click where you usually would click the stars. (black theme has a problem - no icons were in the package - we will fix )
REWING or go BACK: yes, you should not be able to do that. It was a wrong word to use. Actually to drag the bar in any song (on your library not on last.fm) than the scrobbling goes again.





youtube : do you still have mplayer installed? Please try the terminal way and go straigh to this video freezing problem. We need to know what's happening

About the power consumption thing : I don't know.. we don't have those messages here. Do you have any kind of device monitoring app ? applet? We will investigate it further and if you can tell us some apps you have installed so we can try mimic it here.

So you are also "plugged on power right" ? I don't know maybe canola is checking the battery and the signal is broadcasting to the system messaging thing. Let us investigate that deeper.

Cheers and thanks!

Marcelo

The start of all youtube videos are slightly corrupted. Playback of the saved .flv's directly through mplayer does not show these same artifacts.

I still think the interface lags a little more than it should, but that's a subjective item ( flat black theme ).

Hardware back/return button does not work as expected on the now playing screen ( youtube, haven't checked others )

Hi,
First, thanks for mentioning about the flatblack theme problem in last.fm. It's the only theme I use (might try flatred to check).

Next, youtube update: I was able to run it normally after restarting Canola (without clicking back right away, it seem to work).
new "problem" found however: the video playback is unequal: the first 3/4 of a second, only 1/4 of the video is played, then in the last 1/4 second, all the remaining frames are displayed. (this is continuously repeated). That problem creates a unequal video playback, quite uneasy for the viewer. The playback was better on the previous release; the total framerate might have been smaller, yet more equal.
Wondering if you could take a look,


About MPlayer: I have version 1.0rc1-maemo.26.n8x0 (if there's a newer version, it's not in any of the repositories I have)
Ilia

P.S. please don't get me wrong: i believe there IS a serious progress from beta7 to beta8, and I appreciate it! I am just helping you find the bugs.

P.P.S. is a menu supposed to be present for the last.fm or not yet?

Brontide : The Ui does lag in several cases. We do push it to the limits even more on those really complex screens (like the youtube list, podcast list) where there's too much objects on a scene : / We try to improve as much as we can This inital part, I think is due to the Streaming mode + embedded mode. If we can make it work better ( a patch for mplayer) we will do that.

Hardware back button : I will check this, it didn't happen here in my test devices.

thanks for the feedback.

Marcelo

Last.fm menu : No, all basic features are in the screen right now.

Video playback : Ilia, we didn't changed anything (Really) on the video playback. We just say "mplayer please play this, embedded mode, thanks"

The codec mess on the first second already happened on beta7 (streaming) and it's actually some videos happens others not. We really didn't touch this. :/

I think you can see also that this doesn't happen if you play from canola, but inside the video section ( a saved video )

Cheers

Marcelo

Hi,

I copy the problem with the hardware "back" button problem: only the onscreen button works when video is being played in youtube (both fullscreen and windowed)
This also occurs when playing video from a local folder.
Does not occur when playing music from local or last.fm. Does not occur in the photos.

Ilia

yeah, it's a localized problem. We are already fixing it. We don't use hardware keys (kidding)