Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

Once in a while, The Guru gets a reader’s comment that are best addressed via a blog entry. One such comment came into The Guru earlier this weekend in regards to the Review: Foxy Tunes entry. Here is the comment in it’s entirety from zoomman:

I’m fascinated. I wish you would have explained why you thought that this add on was anything but fluff. What’s the point of this bit of dross?

I run WinAmp as well, the first player that Foxy Tunes lists in its list of supported players (though not listed in the list that comes with the add-on itself). I run it at the top of the screen, I run it whether or not I’m using Firefox, what do we need this Foxy Tunes player for? I really only even bothered with it because CNET and PC Mag. were practically setting up altars to the thing, but I can’t see the sense. Maybe that would have been something to mention in this review.

Now, obviously, I’m in a minority here…but truly, could you give some details about why this is such a great thing? How much “configuration” did it take? What can it do that using WinAmp can’t? While using WinAmp (and I imagine, other players) I do literally have to “leave” Firefox, but not in any real sense because I just keep my player handy in a minimized form, so it really doesn’t take any more time or effort than if it were in Firefox proper, so why the effusion?

Hmm….Well, basically the reason why I think FoxyTunes is such a great thing is that I am able to control WinAmp from Firefox, Thunderbird, Netscape and (when I still had it installed) Flock without having to leave the application. I can play, stop, pause, advance/repeat tracks, mute the player all from the control panel. Configuration is nothing more than a few seconds to pick your player from the list. It took me a heck of a lot longer to try to get the multi-media keyboard that came with my Vista system to work correctly with WinAmp. It never did and I ended up reverting back to my old wireless keyboard.

“What can it do that using WinAmp can’t?” Again, the main thing for me is I don’t have to to leave the browser to search for the player on the minimized on the taskbar or play alt-tab roulette. Then there is the ‘Search’ feature (see below)? Based on the current track playing you can do multiple searchers for the album, artist and/or song. Although, I rarely use the search features via the control panel.