The Banshee development community has been working for months on a major refresh for the popular music player. The first Banshee 1.0 alpha was released today, providing users with an early look at Banshee's new features and vastly improved user interface.
The developers decided to jettison the conventional GTK treeview widgets and implement new ones that use custom drawing to supply an assortment of unique usability enhancements and aesthetic improvements. The custom widgets are used to provide completely new content browser controls that can display album art and easily allow group selections.
Another significant advantage of the Banshee 1.0 is that startup time has been significantly reduced. Unlike previous versions, which frustrated users with tedious waits and a loading screen, the new version starts almost immediately. The new version is also more memory efficient and uses less system resources. Other improvements include extensive Last.fm integration, better search functionality, a built-in equalizer, and a play queue feature.
I tested the alpha release on Ubuntu 7.10 by installing the required dependencies from a PPA and building the source from trunk. Although the alpha release seems to handle audio playback reliably, there are still a number of features that haven't been fully reimplemented yet. For instance, it is missing support for audio CDs and portable devices. There are also a number of popular plugins that haven't been ported yet.
In a blog entry, developer Aaron Bockover points out that the alpha release can safely be installed alongside the stable release, so anybody can give it a try. He also says that many more features are coming soon. For more details, check out the release notes.
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