Coming to your tablet… soon!

Today we dropped a new Orange Squeeze Preview 1.4 upgrade out on Google Play. We’ve been working on this round of preview releases since mid-January, and they add a lot of speed and compatibility improvements along with a bunch of bug fixes too. This particular update adds a few new browsing and now-playing refinements, along with a host of bug fixes from the previous release. We’re moving towards a stable release within the next month or so!

A reminder that Orange Squeeze Preview is FREE for all users of Orange Squeeze, and can be installed alongside your existing Orange Squeeze so that you don’t risk losing access to your music if you encounter a bug.

Since our last update, we also released seven small maintenance releases for the release version of Orange Squeeze, bringing the current version to 1.3.7. This has proven to be a relatively stable release and we will only be issuing updates if critical bugs or incompatibilities are discovered.

Well, we finally did it. 6+ months of work have culminated in the release of Orange Squeeze 1.3.0 on Google Play, SlideME, or AndroidPIT. This release adds some key missing features to the app and more importantly should improve overall stability and performance.

New Features

• Updated visual styling
• Introduction of the “compact” theme selection in preferences, along with refinements to the classic theme.
• Ability to download tracks to your local device (Android 2.3/Gingerbread and higher).
• Context menu available on now playing screen and from current playlist items.
• Sleep capability for players
• Two widgets available for your home screen. On Android 4.2 (Jellybean) and higher, these widgets may be placed on the lockscreen.
• Players can be moved between servers from the player management screen.
• Global search, now allows searching more music sources like Mog and last.fm. Searches can automatically open up branches that you use.

This release is a free upgrade for all users! Thanks!

We are hard at work on version 1.3.0 of Orange Squeeze, which will improve the overall fit and polish of Orange Squeeze. To that end, we’ve released a preview app on Google Play called (fittingly) Orange Squeeze Preview. The best news is that this is completely free for existing users of Orange Squeeze! We’re going to use this app to test out new features and give people who want a taste of the bleeding edge something to chew on. This preview program replaces our old beta program; one of the main benefits to this approach is that you can have both apps installed side-by-side. This way, if something is temporarily broken in the preview release, you can always go back to the known stable version.

Please feel free to give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Today we released a bug-fix release of Orange Squeeze, version 1.2.7. Development of the next major release continues in parallel.

Here are the release notes:

Defects Fixed

• Fixed an issue where some sorted lists would not be detected as sorted lists.
• Fixed several isolated crashes reported on Google Play.

Last week we did a soft-launch of Orange Squeeze 1.2.6, which contained several bug fixes and a few minor diagnostic enhancements.

Here are the release notes:

Enhancements

• Added advanced preferences for verbose logging
• Added integration with the excellent free app CatLog to allow easier submission of logs.

Defects fixed

• Fixed an issue that caused a crash when connecting to servers without any connected players.
• Fixed several isolated crashes reported on Google Play.

Today we released Orange Squeeze 1.2.5.  Stabilizing the 1.2.x release of the app has been a challenge, but we’re making progress. Part of developing apps for Android includes supporting a large number of devices — latest count is 1275 unique devices! This speaks to both the diversity of the platform and its users.

Here are the release notes for 1.2.5:

1.2.5

Defects fixed

• Fixed several issues surrounding pinning menu items to the root menu, including #48.
• Fixed a crash that would occur when enabling Line In on a Boom from the browse menu. The behavior of the menu itself is still sub-optimal, but it no longer crashes.
• Fixed several isolated (but persistent) crashes reported on Google Play

This afternoon we pushed out a new release of Orange Squeeze to all of the normal destinations.  This is primarily a bug fix release, but it does include a few new features of note.  Here are the specifics:

Enhancements

• Add option to customize Wake-On-LAN settings from the context menu of the “switch servers” or “connect” screen.
• Default Wake-On-LAN settings now send packet to both ports 7 and 9.
• General performance improvements when loading larger lists and any time multiple requests were active.

Defects fixed

• Fixed several issues with older Logitech software versions (tested as far back as 7.3.3), including #46.
• Several crashes reported on Google Play.
• Various menu handling fixes, including issues #44, #45, #47.
• Wake-On-Lan was not being triggered as expected under some circumstances.
• Fix bug that was sending SqueezePlayer pings after Orange Squeeze had shut down.
• Fix performance issue on Android 4.x devices where background processes would dramatically slow down artwork loading and other tasks.
• Fix preference migration issue causing crashes when opening preference screen.

I’m happy to announce that late last week we pushed out our first updates to the Orange Squeeze 1.2 series. This release incorporates tons of bug fixes and introduces new browsing modes based on Logitech’s Jive platform. This means that Orange Squeeze is now compatible with most of the server-side plugins that you may be accustomed to using like CustomBrowse, Biography, MusicInfo, etc.

With these updates come a few new bugs (thus the 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 releases so soon after 1.2.0), so you can expect more frequent bug fixes as we iron out the problems. Your patience is appreciated!

Major Changes

• Uses new communications framework that mimics the behavior of SqueezePlay, SqueezeBox Touch and Squeezebox Radio devices.
• Supports a wide variety of server plugins that alter the browsing characteristics of Squeezebox devices.
• Item pinning allows the addition of certain higher-level menu items to the home menu.
• Supports disabling artist artwork in preferences, if desired.

Minor changes

• Indicator when network-driven popups are being loaded
• Add option to pause/resume players when a call is made (previously only muting/unmuting was an option).

Defects fixed

• Fix crash on launch if database upgrade failed or was incomplete.
• Various menu handling fixes and improvements
• Volume button was not visible in landscape mode in “Now Playing”
• Better and more graceful handling when network connection drops.
• Fix certain crashes when loading the artist list, due to problems building the artist artwork.
• Plenty of stability improvements; too many to list individually.
• A failed connection attempt via “Switch Server” no longer ends the existing connection.

This week we’ve got a release of Orange Squeeze with several important bug fixes and one experimental new feature — wake on LAN.

Changes in 1.1.4 (and 1.1.3 — don’t ask)

Enhancements

• Add experimental wake on LAN (WOL) for servers on the local wifi network (Gingerbread only)

Defects fixed

• Improved connectivity checking behavior.
• #22: Fix favorite removal that would sometimes result in favorite corruption.
• Fix favorite addition for some audio types (URL-based internet radio services)
• Fix a few rare force-closes reported on the market.