Seems like it's been ages since I've been able to do this (probably because it has!): I've released a brand-new piece of software.

Njiiri is a client for MPD, using GTK+, written in Ruby. I don't see a lot of desktop apps out there using Ruby, so this was a new and fun experience for me. I've tried to make it as "boring" as possible, in the sense of looking vaguely like a proper, HIG-compliant GNOME app, with (appropriately) no pointless configuration knobs. The browser, in particular, is a mostly pixel-for-pixel clone of the standard file-open dialog. And it's accessed by a big toolbar button with a stock "Open" icon.

Basically, if desktop software makes me think ("oh, I'm in iTunes, all the controls work differently, let's adjust our approach"), it's failed. For me, anyway. So, I'm pretty happy with the direction I'm going (even though I'm very much not there yet. I haven't hooked up search, for example).

One of the things I like about MPD is that it gives me the freedom to remove things if I want to. And I like removing things; small is beautiful. For example, I originally had no place to stick a crossfading control in, so I was going to just dump it. If you need it, "mpc crossfade" is a terminal away. (It turned out that it did eventually fit nicely into my layout. I'm a bit obsessive about aesthetics.)

In a similar way, I've avoided duplicating anything I do with homegrown scripts or mpdtoys; there's just no need. What I want out of a GUI frontend is a sort-of tangible way to manipulate things when I feel like looking at them visually for a bit. Then I close it and move on.

MPD certainly isn't the most wonderful implementation of a system which allows that, but the client ecosystem is quite diverse and I'd say it deserves a look if any of this sounds interesting to you.