Tools menu after installing the Open in Songbird add-on
Songbird is a great piece of software – a halfway-home between media player and browser that turns the web into a playlist. Since version 1.1 added the possibility of opening a Songbird tab from Firefox through a special ‘songbird:’ protocol, I’ve been meaning to try to make an extension that does just that, and in a user-friendly manner. Having never made a Mozilla add-on before, it also seemed a relatively simple project to get help me get my feet wet.
Skip much head-scratching and cursing and here is is: Open in Songbird for Firefox. It adds what it says on the tin: an ‘Open this page in Songbird’ option to Tools, right-click and toolbar menus in the browser. If you want the toolbar button, you have to add it manually after installation, as Mozilla try to prevent users’ virtual real estate from clogging with each new extension by hiding buttons by default. Just click ‘customize’ and drag the Songbird icon to the toolbar.
I’m no artist so I’ve re-used the icon file that comes with Songbird 1.1 in Windows. If this is a problem I am happy to change it, but as it is I’m hoping this extension could be of use to the Songbird faithful. Props also to Chris Castiglione for this post on using bookmarklets to achieve similar results as my extension – it’s a simple operation behind-the-scenes, but Open in Songbird should make it a lot more pleasant for those lacking the requisite javascript know-how.
