show mute button during a call

[Jon Tai]

Binary package hint: ekiga

I installed Jaunty this weekend and was happy to see the new version of Ekiga. The new interface looks great and makes my contacts more readily available.

One thing I miss is the ability to see the status of mute during a call without having to open the Chat menu. The old interface in the Intrepid version of Ekiga had a mute button visible during calls, so you could click it to mute, and while on mute, the button would stay depressed so you knew you were muted. It would be great to add the mute button to the Call Panel so that it'd be available during calls.

The only way I've found to check if I'm muted is to open the Chat menu, then check the audio entry. If it says "Suspend Audio", I'm not on mute - if it says "Resume Audio", I'm on mute.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/ekiga
Package: ekiga 3.2.0-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ekiga
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Andreas Moog (ampelbein)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=580529

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Hi,

There is a mute button in the call panel, below the video (using the classic sign || ).

Closing this bug.

Best regards,
Yannick

[Jon Tai (jontai)]

The || button is a "Hold" button, not a "Mute" button. If the server is configured to do so, putting the call on hold will play hold music, where mute will just disable your microphone.

I often join conference calls where I mainly listen, but sometimes speak. In these cases, I cannot put the call on hold, otherwise the other members of the conference will hear hold music. I just want to be able to quickly mute/unmute my microphone, and to easily see if I'm on mute or not.

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Ok, I see.

I guess the short key M to mute audio is fine, right?

What you want is a visual feedback on the main GUI, right?

[Jon Tai (jontai)]

Yes, I think it would be nice to have a button next to the "pause" ("||") button that can be clicked or responds to the "m" key and stays depressed when the line is muted, much like the pause button does now.

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

I made a mockup: just the same behaviour as it is now, but if you press M you have the visual feedback (based on the sound mixer icon).

Will that be ok?

[Jon Tai (jontai)]

I think having a dedicated button with a microphone icon would be better than sharing the existing volume mixer button. Users who are new to ekiga would not discover the "m" key -- they would just assume that clicking the button is the only functionality available (and I presume that clicking the button would still bring up the volume mixer). Also, the speaker icon with a "do not enter" sign on it implies that the speakers are muted, not the microphone.

[Yannick Defais (sevmek)]

Hm... In Gnome there is a trade-off between the feature the GUI exposes and usability. I need to study the guidelines more deeply and discuss it with the devs. Maybe this might be part of a more deep change for the GUI in Ekiga.

Thank you for commenting.

Best regards,
Yannick