Tutorial

• Getting started
• How to setup the General tab
• How to setup the FTP tab
• How to setup the HTTP tab
• How to setup the Local tab

Getting started

You don't know how to get started? Well, then this is the right place for you. We'll start by learning how to open Now Chirping.
It can be done in two ways:

1. The Option Way.

   1. Open Songbird
   2. In the menu, click "Tools"
   3. In the dropdown-list choose "Add-ons..."
   4. Now find you way to the "Now Chirping" addons, and press "Options"

2. The Fast Way.

   1. Open Songbird
   2. In the left-lower part of the window you should see a globe-icon. It might be disabled, but may also be blue (activated). Right click that!
   3. Now the same optionwindow that opened if you used "The Option Way" should popup, and you're ready to go!

How to setup the General tab

Right now the General tab, isn't that feature rich. Only to controls are available, a checkbox and a textbox.
The checkbox specifies if you wan't to activate or disable Now Chirping. If it's not checked, Now Chirping is deactivated
But if it is Now Chirping is activated. You can also toggle between these to stages by right-clicking the little globe-icon.

Now there's the textbox, here you can determine how many seconds of the track that have to be played before Now Chirping sends its requests.
A good tip is that you should never set it to 0. That will cause Now Chirping to make requests on every track you play, even if you're just jumping through youre files.
I normally just set it to 5 seconds.

How to setup the FTP tab

Right now there's a bug that makes Now Chirping overwrite the file, and replace the content.

The FTP is, (oh you never guess it) for transfering the "Now Playing" data to a file on a FTP server. It got some settings we'll walk through:
Enabled - This is (as for the General tab) the setting that specifies if Now Chirping should send the data to a file on a FTP server.
Server - Here you write the servername for the server. As you can see in the example, you only specify the "root" servername. Do not write the FTP scheme (ftp://)
File - Here's the place for writing the filename, Now Chirping should save data to. As you can see in the example, the filename is included with directories. Do not start with a trailing slash!
Username - Here the place for your FTP username.
Password - As for the username, you just specify your FTP password.
Data - Now it's getting exciting! This is the place where you write the data that should be transfered to your file. You can see the replace parameters to the left.
Example: %title% - %artist% --------------------------------------------- Album: %album% Genre: %genre% Rating: %rating% Composer: %composer% year: %year%

How to setup the HTTP tab

This is the place for HTTP POST request. The controls goes:
Enabled - As for all the Now Chirping extensions, this also needs to be enabled to work.
Url - Here you specify the URL that the data should be send to. Please notice that if you need any GET parameters this is the place to add them.
Parameters - So this is the main-thing in the HTTP tab. Here you can add, edit and delete POST variables.
Add - If you click this button, you'll be prompted with the Attribute Editor. Here you can specify variables. Please notice the replace variables, such as %title%. Do not use them in the name, only in the value.
Edit - This button allows you to edit parameters you've already set. Just select a parameter by clicking it, and click Edit.
Delete - As the Edit button, you just select a parameter and then click delete. This will (give it a guess!) delete the variable.

How to setup the Local tab

So the last tab: Local. This tabs allows you to save local files, with the now playing data.
Enabled - If you don't know it by now, you never will...
Path - This is the absolute path to the file. For both you and Now Chirping's security, just press the "..." button, and choose a file.
Data - As for the FTP save, this is where you set the content of the file.
Example: %title% - %artist% --------------------------------------------- Album: %album% Genre: %genre% Rating: %rating% Composer: %composer% year: %year%