A Brief History of TuneBar
TuneBar was the first application that I ever released publicly. The initial release was in May 2005, as TuneX. The application was little more than a simple controller for iTunes that offered limited feedback on what song was currently playing. It was these humble beginnings as a weekend project that TuneBar came from.
The next major version of TuneBar (TuneX 2) was the first version to be sold as shareware. It went on sale in July 2006 and quickly began to generate interest. The application had taken 6 months to develop, and added a great number of features to its predecessor. Searching, Rating, Volume control and specialised notifications made TuneX 2 feel like a much more rounded and professional feeling application.
Through feedback from users TuneX 2 was updated on a regular basis, with each update further refining the look and feel, adding in support for Hot Keys and artwork in notifications.
It wasn't until early 2007, with the release of version 2.6 that TuneX became known as TuneBar. With the change in name the applications popularity began to grow faster, and thus began work on TuneBar 3, which would make use of newer technologies in the hopes of reducing the amount of resources that version 2 had required, whilst further reducing the size of the foot print it had on the users screen.
At the end of October 2007, just after the release of Mac OS X 10.5, TuneBar 3 was released. It was the most successful release of its life span. Within a matter of months it had been reviewed in 2 major UK Mac Magazines (iCreate and MacFormat), featured on Podcasts and Blogs.
Gradually however updates began to slow, and as work began on TuneBar 4 it became clear to me that there was very little that could be done with TuneBar from that point on. A new interface was designed, one that would bring a fresh look to TuneBar and leave behind its familiar slide-out bar from under the system menubar, and make the application feel much more integrated with the system.
TuneBar 4's development lasted for almost 2 years (on and off) before I realised that I just couldn't invest the required amount of time in to it, and so the decision to remove the shareware license and make the application free was made.
By Christmas 2011, TuneBar 3 will be freely available for anyone that wishes to use it.
What is TuneBar?
The driving concept behind TuneBar has always been its simplicity and unobtrusive design. Accessible in ways that provides iTunes control and information within mere seconds, TuneBar 3 is going to take your iTunes experience to a whole new level.
Slim, Sleek, Simple
Through the versions of TuneBar the controller has changed design numerous times, changing in appearance and size, but always staying relatively small. TuneBar 3 follows this pattern and introduces a whole new controller design dubbed "SlimBar". SlimBar has a clean dark blue on white appearance and is incredibly thin, making it seem like a mere extension of your menubar, while keeping all the functionality from TuneBar 2.
Just the way you want it
One of the major new features in TuneBar 3 is the radically improved controller, which is fully customizable. You can choose from several pre-made customizations, download new ones or even make your own! Don't like the search field? Get rid of it! If you have even a slight experience with HTML like languages you'll be well on your way to making your own Controllers.
Know your music
TuneBar offers a fantastic set of features for informing you of what song has just begun or is currently playing in iTunes. With several types of notification styles to choose from and Growl support, there really is no reason not to what is currently playing in iTunes.
