Mumbles 0.4 is Out

Download and Installation instructions for 0.4 can be found here.

New to this Release:

New Plugins

• mumbles now has plugins for Gaim, Pidgin, Rhythmbox, Firefox*, Thunderbird*, and custom notifications.

*Firefox and Thunderbird plugins require a DBus extension. Please see the extras page for more information.

Theme Support

• mumbles 0.4 introduces theming ability. This release comes with 6 standard themes and the ability to support custom themes.

mumbles-send script

• mumbles-send is a script included with mumbles that allows sending of custom notifications. See the download page for an example of how to use mumbles-send.

Growl Network Notification Support

• When started with Growl Network Notification support, mumbles can receive notifications over the network using the Growl network protocol. mumbles-send can also send Growl network notifications. Use mumbles with your Mac, or just send notifications to another computer running mumbles with Growl Network Notifications enabled. See the Growl section of the mumbles preferences pane or run ‘mumbles –help’ (or ‘mumbles-send –help’) for information about enabling and configuring Growl Network Notification support.

Daemon mode

• Want to just run mumbles in the background without a panel applet? Run ‘mumbles -d’ to start in deamon mode.

Click Handling

• mumbles now supports click handling. Right clicks close the notification and the Firefox plugin opens the downloaded file on left click.

Bug fixes and code improvements

• What’s a release without them?

I hope you dig it.

• Let me know what you think, what you’d like to see and whatever else is on your mind. I have some tutorials ready to roll out so check back here for updates on using the new features in mumbles 0.4 including: writing a plugin, creating custom themes and how to unleash the awesomeness that is network enabled notifications!

I’ve been getting pretty regular questions about the state of the project, so I thought I’d start a new thread and ask for some feedback from those of you following the site (and asking me about it).

I’ve been preoccupied with the job thing, so I haven’t been working too much on Mumbles. With the most recent updates (svn is at a state where release 0.4 is coming shortly), it’s at the point where it does what I wanted it to do (scratched the itch as they say), so going forward, the project is really going to be driven by those of you that use it (and take the time to file a request). So please let me know what you want from the project in the comments for this post. More application plugins? Which applications would you like to see Mumbles support? New features? Better configuration?

As a starting point, here are some things I’ve been thinking about (and built the project with the idea of implementing in future releases):

* RSS notifications - I’ve had a request for this from another user and would like to see this myself - it’s probably the next thing I’ll work on. I’m a bit undecided about how to pursue this - should there be a script for something like Liferea that sends dbus notifications, should I write a simple RSS aggregator that sends dbus notifications? Any ideas/comments?

* Plugin-specific configuration - It seems like an option to only get a notification if your name is said in an IRC room makes sense. I also have the ability to handle clicks on the notification, so things like brining the application to focus or opening the website for the RSS feed make sense (the code in svn has some of this implemented). I believe Growl also keeps notifications open if you mouse over them - should Mumbles?

* libnotify output - I’ve been thinking it makes sense to make output plugins much like the application (input) plugins and have seen some comments from others who prefer libnotify alerts. So why not let you choose to use the Mumbles (composite enabled) notification or a libnotify notification - or any other kind of output for that matter (save to a database, SMS, email…?)

* Documentation/Tutorials - I’d like to drive contributions and assume writing some documentation or a tutorial about how to write a plugin would help on that front. Contributions about contribution would be good too. I’ve seen a few comments about how people are using Mumbles with other applications and feel the word could really get out with a few examples about how to use the mumbles-send script and/or the Mumbles dbus object (like Chris’ Thunderbird example)

* Themeable notifications/images - one could “theme” Mumbles by just swapping out the background image - do we want the ability to easily support themes (or use Gnome settings)? Should mumbles use buddy icons/album art/whatever else for the notification icons (see the point above about plugin-specific) configuration). Do we want to be able to choose font styles/sizes?

* deb package - I would really like to see this in order to make installation easier. I don’t have much experience with packaging files, so any help here would be greatly appreciated. What systems are you using Mumbles on? - do we want rpm, debs…?

That will hopefully get things going. Thanks to those of you following the project - the floor is open - I look forward to your ideas & comments.