FoxyTunes was a

browser extension A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web p ...

allowing control of

media players A media player could refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Wi ...

from the

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

window. The company that developed FoxyTunes was bought by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

in 2008, and FoxyTunes was closed in 2013.

History

In 2004 computer science graduate student Alex Sirota was making Foxytunes available for free and accepting donations. The company behind Foxytunes was founded in 2005 by Vitaly and Alex Sirota with private investors and subsequently acquired by Yahoo! on February 4, 2008, for what was understood to be over , Yahoo! retaining the Foxytunes branding. On June 28, 2013, Yahoo! announced FoxyTunes's closure, scheduled for July 1, 2013. At its peak FoxyTunes was available in over 30 languages.

Software

Foxytunes was controlled by a

toolbar The toolbar, also called a bar or standard toolbar (originally known as ribbon) is a graphical control element on which on-screen icons can be used. A toolbar often allows for quick access to functions that are commonly used in the program. Some ...

interface which was installed on the web browser. Supported web browsers and other applications included

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

SeaMonkey SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape 7. ...

Mozilla Application Suite The Mozilla Application Suite (originally known as Mozilla, marketed as the Mozilla Suite) is a discontinued cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition ...

, Flock and

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The project s ...

. The extension supported the normal media player functions and displayed currently playing track information. In 2007 the FoxyTunes Planet rich media front page was launched. Additionally, the extension allowed searching various Web sites to get images, lyrics, videos, biographies etc. related to the music being played. The presentation of the toolbar interface could be altered by a ''skin'' extension. This allowed a user to select from alternative presentations of the toolbar which had alternative characteristics of colors, layout, size and collapsed state.

Supported players

FoxyTunes supported more than 30 desktop and web-based media players on a diverse variety of platforms. ;Microsoft Windows: *Apollo media player *The Core Media Player *dBpoweramp Audio Player: *

foobar2000 foobar2000 (often abbreviated as fb2k or f2k) is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS and Android developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Stan ...

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

JetAudio JetAudio is a shareware media player application for Microsoft Windows and Android that offers advanced playback options for a wide range of multimedia file formats. Initially released in 1998, JetAudio is one of the oldest extant media ...

JRiver Media Center JRiver Media Center is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows, macOS, or Linux operating systems. JRiver Media Center is a "jukebox"-style media player, like iTu ...

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

MediaMonkey MediaMonkey is a digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows and Android operating systems. MediaMonkey for Windows (sometimes noted as MMW) include ...

Media Player Classic Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...

musikCube musikcube is a free and open-source cross-platform, terminal-based audio player software and streaming server. Features musikcube is based on a modular plug-in architecture, and uses plug-ins written in C++. Plug-ins provide core functionality for ...

Musicmatch Jukebox MusicMatch Jukebox was an audio player made by San Diego-based MusicMatch, Inc. It contained features commonly found in jukebox software such as the ability to manage digital audio files and playlists, audio file conversion, an online music s ...

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

Songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 500 ...

* Sonique *

Quintessential Player Quintessential Player (also called QMP and formerly QCD) was a freeware, multi-format media player developed by Paul Quinn. Quintessential Player began life in 1997 as a CD-only player for Windows, when it was known as Quintessential CD Player ...

* Pandora *

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP ...

* UltraPlayer *

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...

Yahoo! Music Jukebox Yahoo! Music Jukebox, formerly known as Yahoo! Music Engine, was a freeware music player released by Yahoo! in 2005 to compete with iTunes and Rhapsody in the digital music market. Developed side-by-side with MusicMatch Jukebox, another music pl ...

/ Yahoo! Music Engine *

Zinf Zinf is a free audio player for Unix-like and Windows operating systems. Zinf is released under the GNU General Public License. Zinf is a continuation of the FreeAmp project and uses the same source code. Technical features Zinf can play soun ...

;Linux systems: *

XMMS X Multimedia System (XMMS) is an audio player for Unix-like systems released under a free software license. History XMMS was originally written as ''X11Amp'' by Peter and Mikael Alm in November 1997. The player was made to resemble Winamp, which ...

*Beep Media Player * Noatun * JuK * Amarok *

Music Player Daemon Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a free and open music player server. It plays audio files, organizes playlists and maintains a music database. In order to interact with it, a client program is needed. The MPD distribution includes mpc, a simple com ...

Rhythmbox Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems. Rhythmbox is designed to work well under GNOME, but can function on other desktop environments. I ...

;Mac OS X: *

;Online services *

Yahoo! News Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...

Yahoo! Music Yahoo! Music was a brand under which Yahoo! provided a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming. Previously, users with Yahoo! accounts could gain access to hundreds of ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

with TwittyTunes

Reception

FoxyTunes Version 1.0 was reviewed in 2004 by

ExtremeTech ExtremeTech is a technology weblog, launched in June 2001, which focuses on hardware, computer software, science and other technologies. Between 2003 and 2005, ExtremeTech was also a print magazine and the publisher of a popular series of how- ...

, in 2005 by

Ynet Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the '' Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...

, by Tony Hoffman in "The Best Free Software (2007)" in ''

PCMag ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present ...

'' and Preston Gralla in ''

PCWorld ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...

''. It was Claudine Beaumont's favourite in her 2008 article "Firefox 3: Top ten extensions" in ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

''. ''

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner f ...

'' reported in 2008 that it had been downloaded by 8 million users. It was reviewed in 2009 by

download.com CNET Download (originally Download.com) is an Internet download directory website launched in 1996 as a part of CNET. Initially it resided on the domain ''download.com'', and then ''download.com.com'' for a while, and is now ''download.cnet.com'' ...

and

Softpedia Softpedia is a software and tech news website based in Romania. It indexes, reviews and hosts various downloadable software and reports news on technology and science topics. Website Softpedia hosts reviews written by its staff—each review in ...

. In 2010 in How-To Geek. In 2011 by Chris Wiles at ''

TechAdvisor ''Tech Advisor'', previously known as ''PC Advisor'', is a consumer tech website and digital magazine published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc, which also produces '' Macworld, PCWorld'' and ''TechHive.'' IDG Inc was acquired by Blackstone in ...

''/''

Macworld ''Macworld'' is a website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc. It started life as a print magazine in 1984 and had the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macint ...

'', and Ghacks.

References

External links

* *
Yahoo May Be Looking To Buy Israel's FoxyTunes

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

{{Yahoo! Inc. Nonfree Firefox legacy extensions Yahoo! acquisitions Discontinued Yahoo! services Internet Explorer add-ons 2005 software 2005 establishments Proprietary cross-platform software Internet properties disestablished in 2013 Freeware