Hey everyone, today we’re very happy to announce the beta release of FoxyTunes for Firefox v3.5.

Get FoxyTunes for Firefox v3.5 Beta.

We added a ton of improvements to this next release – we’ve made the controls smarter, updated the default skin and improved the menus so that you can do what you want faster and easier. Even though monitors are getting bigger and cheaper we wanted to ensure that FoxyTunes remains compact and useful.

In total we made over 20 improvements, additions, and tweaks to this version of FoxyTunes (click here for a full list), here are just a few examples:

Better player switching

In order to make using multiple players more seamless we’ve added a quick switch menu that lets you jump to other players, pauses your previous player, and shows you which player you’re currently listening to. We’ve also combined the show/hide buttons into the quick switch button so that easy access is just a toggle away.

Player support updates

We’ve added support for Firefox version 3.1, the latest version of VLC, and the latest version of the foobar2000 player. FoxyTunes is also being smart about the players we show in the “Select Player” menu by only showing ones you’ve installed. The full list of supported players is still accessible under the “more” menu.

Smart + Simple = Better

The big themes of this release are smarter and simpler. We’ve put a lot of hard work and thought into how to improve buttons, menus, how players are controlled, and how we can blend the power of FoxyTunes with a streamlined design.

We’re very excited about this release and wanted to share it with you a little early. Check it out here and let us know what you think!

Update: We’ve fixed a few things relating to Wordpress and Signatunes. Have a look and let us know what else you find.

Today we’re releasing a few updates – a new version of FoxyTunes for Firefox and several enhancements to FoxyTunes Planet.

Following our mission to support any media players you might be using, the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox now supports AIMP2 and The KMPlayer media players. Stay tuned for more popular players being supported in the near future

We are also launching several enhancements on the FoxyTunes Planet website – first, there’s a whole new Yahoo! Music Videos widget, so now you have a choice between YouTube and Yahoo! Music video catalogs. The Rhapsody widget has been enhanced to play the top artist tracks right there on the page using the FoxyPlayer. We also tweaked the page layout a bit, and while we had to disable the Yahoo! Image Search and Hype Machine widgets for now, we’re definitely planning to add tons of cool new stuff to the pages in the near future. Finally, you no longer need to create an account and login to persist your widget layout and settings – so if you want to tweak anything in the new layout, feel free to do it without logging in.

Hope you like the new Foxy stuff, let us know what you think!

FoxyTunes 3.0 for Firefox is finally here!

This version adds a very cool new functionality – it can turn any webpage into a playlist you can play right there on that page – without needing to launch any external media players or programs. How is this possible? With the new Yahoo! Media Player.

What’s Yahoo! Media Player?

Yahoo! Media Player is a really cool music player that lives on the web and can play music found on web pages as a playlist. The player floats ‘above’ the page content, so even if you scroll up and down the page, the player stays at the same position right in front of you.

Up until now, in order to add this player to a web page, you had to be the owner of that page. But what about sites that still haven’t added this to their pages? FoxyTunes to the resque!

Yahoo! Media Player + FoxyTunes = Play any page

The latest version of FoxyTunes enhances any page that has music on it by automatically adding the Yahoo! Media Player to that page. Then, you can conveniently play any track on that page or even the whole page as one big playlist!

Here’s an example – a few songs for you to enjoy:

• Negativland – Richard Nixon Died Today
• Tilly and The Wall – Pot Kettle Black
• Less Than Jake – Does The Lion City Still Roar?

If you have the latest FoxyTunes for Firefox installed, you’ll see a tiny ‘play’ buttons next to each song – just push them and see what happens

Also, you can already see the Yahoo! Media Player in action on many great music sites, such as Aurgasm, Soul Sides and List of the Day on Yahoo! Music Blogs.

By the way, if you would prefer that FoxyTunes didn’t add the player to webpages, you can always disable this functionality in FoxyTunes ‘configuration’ menu.

Auto Player Switching – Look Ma, No Hands!

The best thing is that once you start playing a webpage with the new Yahoo! Media Player you can instantly control it with FoxyTunes, even while surfing in other tabs or browser windows – just make sure to leave the page that’s currently playing somewhere in the background. And, if you close that page, your FoxyTunes will automatically switch back to your regular media player – be it iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp etc.

We are very excited about this new version of FoxyTunes, and hope you’ll be as excited as we are!

So, check it out here and let us know what you think!

-Alex

We are very happy to announce that the beta of FoxyTunes for IE v2.0 – our next major version is finally here.

Get FoxyTunes for IE v2.0 Beta

Here’s an overview of what’s new in FoxyTunes for IE v2.0:

Skins

You can now change the appearance of your FoxyTunes by installing a custom skin. There are already more than 11 skins available here, and we’re planning to publish a guide that will describe how anyone can easily create a custom skin for FoxyTunes.

FoxyTunes Mini

Similarly to its Firefox counterpart, FoxyTunes Mini for IE is a universal desktop widget that allows you to control any media player even when you’re not inside a browser. Similarly to its bigger brother, the Mini is customizable, collapsible and skinnable. You can launch the Mini from the FoxyTunes main menu.

Alarm clock and Sleep timer

You can now use your FoxyTunes for IE as an alarm clock – just set your media player to your favorite song, pause it, and tell FoxyTunes at what time to start playing the music. Also, you can use the sleep timer to instruct FoxyTunes to stop the playback after a specified amount of time.

Translations

FoxyTunes for IE now speaks more than 30 languages! FoxyTunes for IE shares most of the translations with FoxyTunes for Firefox – thanks to all the translators for helping localize FoxyTunes to so many languages.

So, check out this version and let us know what you think.

As you might know, Firefox 3 is just around the corner, and we did some work on FoxyTunes to make sure it’s compatible. So, check out the latest version here, and let us know if you see any issues or quirks with the latest beta of Firefox 3.

Also, the latest TwittyTunes is also compatible.

A new FoxyTunes version is here, and it introduces more options for signing your mails and blog posts with music.

Say you’re writing an email, and would like to sign it with the song that was playing 10 minutes ago. Until now, you had to go back and play that song again in order to be able to sign with it. But what if you heard this song on an Internet radio and there’s no way to go back? The new FoxyTunes version allows you to choose any song from your recent playback history and post it as a Signatune.

Better yet, say you’re writing someone an email and want to send them a subliminal music message with your Signatune, for example:

———————-
Now playing: The Doors – Hello, I Love You

The new version allows you to insert any song you can think of as a Signatune – just open the “Post any song” dialog and enter the song name.

The latest version also adds Signatunes support for the new Gmail and Yahoo Mail versions.

So, check it out here and let us know what you think.

As you all know, it’s very important for us to make FoxyTunes truly universal – by supporting as many products, sites and services as possible.

So, today we’re releasing a new FoxyTunes version with many important Signatunes additions:

Thunderbird support – look for the new Signatunes button in your Thunderbird ‘compose’ window. You can now insert music signatures into your Thunderbird mails – both manual and automatic modes are supported

Forums support – you can now add a Signatune to your forum posts! Currently, FoxyTunes supports any forum that uses one of the following software:

• phpBB
• vBulletin
• Invision Power Board
• Web Wiz Forums
• SMF – Simple Machines Forum

LiveJournal support – we had to make a few tweaks, which allowed us to add LiveJournal support to Signatunes

So, check out the latest FoxyTunes version here and enjoy!

VLC is a very popular open source media player. We’ve been getting quite a lot of requests to support it in FoxyTunes, and today we’re releasing a new FoxyTunes version that supports VLC on Windows and Linux.

Before using FoxyTunes with VLC, you’ll need to set-up a few things – just follow the instructions you’ll see when first selecting VLC as a player in FoxyTunes.

So, check the latest FoxyTunes with VLC support and let us know what you think

Today we’re releasing the first phase of what will soon become FoxyTunes 3.0. In this first release we’re introducing a cool new feature called “Signatunes“.

Signatunes allows signing your email messages and blog posts with your currently playing music. Why would you want to do that? Letting your friends know what you were listening to while writing the message is a great way to tell them about your mood, or introduce them to one of your favorite songs. The added music signature is more just a song title – it links to FoxyTunes Planet where your friends can listen to music and learn all there is to know about your favorite artists and songs.

So, how does Signatunes work? FoxyTunes adds a special icon to web mail sites, Blogging services and social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo mail, Wordpress and many others. This allows you to add a music signature to your message with a click. There is also an ‘auto-insert’ mode, which allows you to automatically add a Signatune to every message you compose. If you already have a preset signature – don’t worry, Signatune doesn’t replace your existing signature – it’s added to the end of the message following the message body and any existing signatures.

Initially, the following services are supported:

Facebook Notes, Mail	MySpace Blogs
WordPress	Yahoo! Mail
AOL Mail	Hotmail
Gmail	Horde Webmail
SquirrelMail

In the future, we are planning to add Signatunes to many more sites, Blogging and webmail services, forums and so on.

Signatunes is available in the latest version of FoxyTunes for Firefox – check it out and let us know what you think!

Today we’re releasing a cool new Twitter and FoxyTunes integration service – we call it “FoxyTunes Twitter DJ“.

FoxyTunes DJ is a new Twitter channel with music recommendations from a selected group of “FoxyTunes DJs”. Our first featured DJs are:

• Fred Wilson (A VC, Union Square Ventures)
• Chris Messina (Co-founder, Citizen Agency) – we’d also like to thank Chris for his feedback and advice with this new service
• Ouriel Ohayon (Editor, TechCrunch France; General Manager LightSpeed Gemini Internet Lab)
• Jason Herskowitz (Director – Music Products, AOL)

Also, the new service allows all Twitter users to share their favorite songs with the community. Just add FoxyTunesDJ as your Twitter friend, wait for a few moments until FoxyTunesDJ adds you back and use TwittyTunes to send your music recommendations to FoxyTunesDJ by prefixing it with “@FoxyTunesDJ”. All community recommendations will appear on this FoxyTunes Planet page.

One last thing – in order to make posting to FoxyTunesDJ easier – we added a new drop down option to the latest version of TwittyTunes – get it here!