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| Welcome to ProMP3 Here's a quick overview of what ProMP3 can do:
History
Back in the spring of 2000, I came across an article in The Perl Journal by Lincoln Stein about a
new module he had written called Apache::MP3.
It was my first exposure to just how easy making a streaming music server could be. I looked over the
code, and modified it to fit better into my music collection. Life was good for a while... until I continued
to rip my music collection. Around 300 CD's the system, now mere scraps of Apache::MP3 remained, couldn't
keep up with the demand.ProMP3 is born
I knew I had to do something different so I scrapped everything I had done around september of 2000. Around
this time I just finished running ethernet through my house as well as installing a central stereo with
speakers in every room. I wanted my digital music collection in whole-house mode. I had been doing a lot of work in mod_perl and HTML::Mason, so I used that at first. I wrote an entire mp3 system in one weekend. I threw out the notion of streaming, I had no use for it. And ProMP3 was born. I set up the project in sourceforge, wrote up a lot nice things with some pictures, but I never released any code. It still was too slow and the install process was too complicated. After a break from it, I found the time and rewrote it once again. I Took out as many dependancies as I could (including HTML::Mason). I fixed everything that bothered me about the 4 previous versions. And now it's a standalone perl module only requiring a database. The install is still a bit rough, and that requires some other modules, but all in all it's good enough to be released. For the final rewrite, I spent way too much time on the interface. From all of my previous versions I had learned a very important lesson. Screen space is precious. When listing hundreds, or thousands of items the screen real estate is priceless. Take a look at the screenshots and see what I mean. Enjoy it. |