Ayatana Design

Bug #548543
Comment #8

Comment 8 for bug 548543

Revision history for this message

Alex Beels (arbeels-ossf) wrote on 2010-09-30:

I second Paul's suggestion, and encourage you to bring it up on the mailing list.

Aside from the question of hearing damage, having a max-volume button that you might hit accidentally presents other dangers, such as creating a disturbance in public spaces/offices where low volume may be appropriate, but high volume might not. Sudden volume changes to 0% can make the listener miss a few words in a conversation. Sudden volume changes to 100% can get the listener in trouble with his boss.

If someone wants full volume, he can easily get it by moving the slider. The slider is very hard to change accidentally, while it is quite easy to click a button accidentally.

As far as the interface is concerned, I would argue that the function of the icons is not obvious at all.

First of all, there is a strong convention across devices where volume control buttons are concerned: buttons are provided for increase and decrease volume, with possibly the option of mute. This is how the volume buttons work on my laptop, on my mother's iBook, on my old mp3 player, etc. Two buttons means +/-. Three buttons means +/- and mute. A full-volume button is a big innovation, one I have never seen or heard of before. Therefore, when user looks at indicator-sound the first time, as I did recently, those icons look like +/-, not like full/mute.

Second, there is already a mute button right above the volume control. There couldn't possibly be two mute buttons right next to each other, right? So again the new user assumes that the icons are +/-, not full/mute.

Third, there is another very strong convention for sliders accompanied by buttons: scrollbars. The volume control appears to be a stylised scrollbar, and the naive user will assume that the buttons do what scrollbar buttons do: increase or decrease the slider by a small amount.

Of course, on close examination, the icons are indeed copies of the 0% and 100% icons in my icon theme. But I didn't notice that until I looked very carefully before writing this comment. Up until then, I assumed that they were +/- buttons, just like Paul did.

I second Paul's suggestion, and encourage you to bring it up on the mailing list.

Aside from the question of hearing damage, having a max-volume button that you might hit accidentally presents other dangers, such as creating a disturbance in public spaces/offices where low volume may be appropriate, but high volume might not.  Sudden volume changes to 0% can make the listener miss a few words in a conversation.  Sudden volume changes to 100% can get the listener in trouble with his boss.

If someone wants full volume, he can easily get it by moving the slider.  The slider is very hard to change accidentally, while it is quite easy to click a button accidentally.

As far as the interface is concerned, I would argue that the function of the icons is not obvious at all.

First of all, there is a strong convention across devices where volume control buttons are concerned: buttons are provided for increase and decrease volume, with possibly the option of mute.  This is how the volume buttons work on my laptop, on my mother's iBook, on my old mp3 player, etc.  Two buttons means +/-.  Three buttons means +/- and mute.  A full-volume button is a big innovation, one I have never seen or heard of before.  Therefore, when user looks at indicator-sound the first time, as I did recently, those icons look like +/-, not like full/mute.

Second, there is already a mute button right above the volume control.  There couldn't possibly be two mute buttons right next to each other, right?  So again the new user assumes that the icons are +/-, not full/mute.

Third, there is another very strong convention for sliders accompanied by buttons: scrollbars.  The volume control appears to be a stylised scrollbar, and the naive user will assume that the buttons do what scrollbar buttons do: increase or decrease the slider by a small amount.

Of course, on close examination, the icons are indeed copies of the 0% and 100% icons in my icon theme.  But I didn't notice that until I looked very carefully before writing this comment.  Up until then, I assumed that they were +/- buttons, just like Paul did.