krix: An open-source, visual music browser
Originally downloaded 9/16/06. What a great home page! SourceForge was way too busy the other day when I tried to download krix, but it popped right up today. If the software is half as good as the homepage design, I’m clearly in for a treat. Of course, how this compares with CoverFlow, which Apple recently integrated into iTunes 7, remains to be seen. Krix uses information from iTunes, but generates its own icons for faster browsing. It’s still in pre-alpha stage, so it’s too early to tell if krix is here for the long-haul or not.
Update 12/5/06. Over the last few months, Krix has gotten steadily better, and the developer releases new versions several times a month. It’s still pretty buggy, and I sent the developer an email tonight with a question about why Krix can’t seem to load my iTunes library. (I speculated it has something to do with the symbolic links I use, but that may be way off base.) However, Krix does a fine job loading music folders from my hard drive, and I guess it’s able to read the ID3 tags I’m adding to the music files in iTunes since it knows artist names, finds song art, etc.
Even though Krix still has a ways to go, I’m adding it to my recommended list because it’s so screamin’ cool! The screenshot below shows Krix in its “window” mode, but it’s also great running full screen. If you have an Apple remote, you can opt to control Krix using that. (I haven’t tested that yet.) Once I’m able to load my iTunes library, I’ll have a better idea of whether I’ll be using Krix regularly as an iTunes/music controller.
For a full review of all current iTunes controllers, see my December 2006 article, “An Intimate Evening With Two Dozen iTunes Controllers“.
Version as tested: 16
