Snarl plugin for Winamp

Download here. Changelog is at the bottom of this page. To install, copy gen_snarl.dll to Winamp’s plugins directory and the restart Winamp. By default the plugin directory can be found in C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\Plugins\ . Since version 0.2, my plugin might cause your Winamp to crash if you haven’t installed the Visual Studio 2010 C++ Redistributable package. For those who know what I’m talking about: In the previous version of gen_snarl I had linked the 2008 version statically, which made the binary slightly larger. I recently started using 2010 and that as it turns out made the binary much larger than I feel comfortable with. I really don’t know what caused the big difference. Hence, please just install the redistributable. You’ll save other software developers grief as well.

I am a big fan of Snarl. I like having a consistent way of receiving notifications from applications and am saddened that not enough apps support it. It needs more publicity.

I had been using a plugin for Winamp that allowed it to forward its notifications to Snarl, but I was very disappointed with it. Firstly, it completely failed in delivering song titles and artists written in non-Latin characters, and secondly, it would only deliver an album art thumbnail for certain songs, not others. That’s why I set out to write my own plugin and 5-6 hours of work later, I have a prototype. It still lacks some features which I would like to add, but it’s perfectly functional and stable. It also delivers where the old plugin could not.

I’ve inserted a couple of screenshots to illustrate the simple functionality the plugin offers.

I hope that this will be welcomed by Winamp and Snarl users out there. I have released the first alpha version of this plugin. I have affectionately dubbed it v0.1. It isn’t finished yet because I want to add a few features before I can proudly call it v1.0. Notably, I want to add a configure dialog to the plugin, accessible via the Winamp preferences, which will allow you to specify which tags you would like to be displayed in the Snarl notification. In addition, the plugin currently does not register with Snarl, which means users are unable to set the duration of the notification bubble among other things.

I do not wish to retain any copyright of the source code, so I am releasing it to the public domain. I have formally added a COPYRIGHT.txt file to the source code which provides more details. I do not claim that I am the author of all the source code.  I have made use of 3rd party example code.

Attribution is, of course, appreciated, but not mandatory. Do what you will. Live and let live.

Changelog:

v0.2:

• Now using the latest (V42) version of Snarl’s API. This allows me to update notifications. When you cycle through many songs, you used to get a notification for each skip forward. Now I update the same notification if it’s still visible.
• Removed the configure dialog from Winamp’s plugin preferences. It didn’t work. Including it in the last version was an oversight.
• Before now Winamp’s plugin list used to list gen_snarl as “Snarl notifications.” Now I’ve tacked on a version, so it’s easier to keep track.