The update brings a ton of interface-improvements. In a trice this is what caught my attention:

• JDownloader is still based on Java but the startup time of JDownloader 2 is vastly shorter
• The settings-list isn’t encapsulated anymore
• the size of the captcha-window can be changed
• you can create different rules to be applied to your downloads based on filename, -size, -type, hoster etc. There are a lot of different rules like putting something in a special directory or starting downloads automatic for files where a certain rule applies. The possibilities are nearly endless as the screenshot at the bottom of this article proves
• filters can be created for the Linkgrabber
• DLC-files can be created directly with the Linkgrabber

So how do install this bastard?

There is no update-package available currently so you’ll have to use the new JDownloader-Updater. You can download it here:

Extract the contents of this archive to any location. I chose C:\JDownloader.

You have to execute Updater.jar now. I did this by opening the windows commandline, switching to the folder containing java.exe  (for me it is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin” in Windows 7 x64). Start die jar-file by executing the following command!

java -jar C:\JDownloader\Updater.jar

You have to insert your path to the Updater.jar if it doesn’t match mine of course. If you did everything correctly (and have a recent Java Runtime Environment installed) the new Updater starts and downloads the new JDownloader to the same folder (ca. 30MB).

Click on “Start JDownloader” and enjoy the whole AeroGlass magnificence!

The About-dialog confirms that this is in fact JDownloader 2 Beta.

Personally I feel at home with the new look. Especially the download-rules are a major addition.

A few additional screenshots

Almost one year after In The Mix Vol. 16 I present you my new work. I dropped the number from the title because counting gets harder as the numbers rise. For the first time the cover and title actually have something to do with the content of the mix but I leave that for you to explore. I’m looking forward to your feedback.

This is the official description

Sergeant Hedgehog drops you into enemy territory with this new weapon of dancefloor mass destruction. Brace yourself to come under fire by his fierce tech-house and electro beats. Only the bravest electronic music lovers among you will pass and become a real Basterd.

While the post-frequency has pretty much stalled in this blog during the last months I’ve got quite a lot of stuff up my sleeves for the near future. After living in Münster for almost four years I’ll move to Berlin to take up a job in a well established music-technology-company. While I’ve got some visionary mumbo-jumbo bustling about my brain I’ll eat humble pie for now and concentrate on dusting off all tools and plugins I released here. Some people have been waiting years for updates. I recommend listening to the mix above to pass your time.

It’s been completely rewritten for the third time. There is now a native version for Mac OS X -user. I had to finish it on a virtual machine since my MacBook died on me. That was very time-consuming. I’d rejoice a small donation so I can buy a new one (and continue developing awesome sauce). Alternatively you can also invite me to a beer in real life to kill the pain caused by that unspeakable slow development environment.

Download

Usage instructions

You can find those in the main article.

New features in detail:

Native Mac OS X-version

The old Traktor Scrobbler was also useable in OS X but required a lot of fiddling. This new version has been developed by using the plattform independant framework Qt. That also means that .NET isn’t required on Windows anymore. The new Scrobbler comes packaged with all required libraries. That’s also the reason why the program is much bigger now. I tried to keep the libraries small though. Many thanks go to Jens Bache-Wiig’s QML desktop components and the relentless help of the Qt Ambassador Volker.

Playlists are saved

Traktor Scrobbler creates a directory called ‘playlists’ where it saved the played songs of every session if you don’t disable this option.

Nicecast Support

This one is probably the most useful new feature. Many of the OS X user probably stream using Nicecast. While Nicecast is a great tool it can’t read artist or title of a song. The new Traktor Scrobbler can easily provide this data for Nicecast.

no PIN required anymore for Twitter-login

The process of granting Traktor Scrobbler access to your Twitter-account doesn’t require you anymore to write down a 7-digit PIN.

Send Twitter-messages from Traktor Scrobbler

You can now also send regular Tweets from Traktor Scrobbler. This may be helpful if you want to give some shouts to your followers while spinning.

Support for Unicode-characters in artist-name and title

Unicode-characters like German umlauts or  other languages will now be interpreted correctly.

customizable port

Traktor Scrobbler connects to Traktor through a network protocol. If the default-port 8008 is already in use by another application, you can adjust the value in the settings-file TraktionScrobbler.ini

copy current track to clipboard

A video-jockey wanted to use the current track’s title in his video performances. The easiest way for him to get this data was through the system’s clipboard. Therefore this feature has been implemented.

What is missing?

Although this was possible in the old version, you can’t attach yourself to a running icecast-stream to catch its metadata. I will fix this in the next version.

There is a Last.fm-tab now (so I don’t have to take the screenshots twice) but the Traktor Scrobbler still can’t ‘scrobble’. That’s the #1 priority for now and will be possible starting from the next version which I’ll hopefully complete soon.

These short tips I’m giving every now and then are pretty well received among you. Therefore here is another one.

Google Chrome is the best browser for me currently. However its similar to a partnership. There are always things which bother you about the other one. The main flaw I see is Chrome’s internal music-player which launches upon clicking on a mp3 instead of just download it. On the internal player’s page you can download the mp3 via pressing CTRL+S (respectively the option-key on the Mac).

I’ve been looking for a really long time for a proper solution and found one which works ok.

To download a file directly, hold the ALT-key during clicking on the link. You can get used to it after a while even if its not the most beautiful solution.

I will update this entry in the future if someone pops up with a better way to handle it. I’ve got an idea for a Greasemonkey-script which might do the trick. Those can be installed directly as a Chrome-extension.

Now that the work is done, it’s time to produce some dance-music.