Our correspondent tells you why the Songbird browser is a must-have on every music lover’s desktop

MOST of us prefer some music in the background as we surf the Net or check mail at home. Some others, especially the more culturally inclined among us, surf the Net mostly for music. It is keeping these two types of surfers in the mind that Pioneers of the Inevitable, a group of designers and developers, some of whom have worked behind popular programmes like Firefox, Winamp and Yahoo Jukebox, decided to create an “open customisable media player” called Songbird.

To put things in perspective it’s a great music player which also doubles up as a decent browser. Since its release last year, the webplayer has been a rage among hardcore surfers as well as Net music junkies. The programme is open source, and developers around the world are currently working on new add-ons that add to the Songbird experience. There are around a hundred add-ons — from the brilliant to the downright ridiculous — on last count.

The browser is basic, considering that almost all the add-ons are for the music player. However, with a look and feel similar to Mozilla Firefox, it works fine and even supports tabbed browsing.

But Songbird is more about the webplayer. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, and helps users create dynamic playlists that automatically update based on the criteria you set. It can also be customised by downloading the scores of skins, aptly called feathers, that help tweak the appearance according to your style.

... contd.