Show tooltip with current sink and audio level

[tgpraveen]

Binary package hint: indicator-sound

earlier a mouse over on volume control icon in notification area told me volume in %.
now i have no where to get that info.

[Luca Ferretti (elle.uca)]

The tooltip could/should also show audio level in dB

[Daniel K (sinani201)]

Thank you for taking the time to make Ubuntu better. Since what you submitted is not really a bug, or a problem, but rather an idea to improve Ubuntu, you are invited to post your idea in Ubuntu Brainstorm at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ where it can be discussed, voted by the community and reviewed by developers. Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion!

[Nicolas DERIVE (kalon33)]

Sinani201 : It's a regression from previous volume applet.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Thanks for the suggestion, but this is by design. Menus shouldn't have tooltips.

Even the full Sound Preferences window doesn't tell you the volume as a percentage or decibels. If it's worthwhile showing as a numeric value at all, I suggest investigating a way to add it in that window first.

[joshedmonds (josh-edmonds)]

I understand the design decision, but 9.10 would show a change when the scroll wheel was used to change the volume. This functionality has been removed as part of this design decision. If you don't want to show tool tips, that's a design choice. Making me click on the volume control icon to change the volume with the scroll wheel is a regression.

[Luca Ferretti (elle.uca)]

Matthew, what can I do if I disagree on some specific design details you defined here[1]? Please excuse my impoliteness, but it seems that you wrote that design changing some long standing paradigms in GNOME Desktop without explaining the reasons or the rationales. Note that I'm not against the proposed design, just I can't understand 2 or 3 decision you made. So I like to propose my doubts, my reasons and my solutions, but I fear the "this is by design" default reply :(

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CustomStatusMenuDesignGuidelines

[Luca Ferretti (elle.uca)]

I'm reopening this bug after bug #521046 was fixed. Standard menus support only mouse clicks, not wheel actions, breaking this basic rule makes the indicator icons special objects.

I hope we could reconsider the "no tooltip" decision, allowing them to show mode details about current status (for instance output source in sound indicator, playing song/source in rhythmbox, remaining time/percentage in power and so on), so I'm going to open a bug against ayatana project to discuss this.

[Conor Curran (cjcurran)]

can this now be closed ?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

joshedmonds, in 10.04 you can change volume with the scroll wheel without opening the menu first. (Ironically you can't do it if you *do* open the menu first, which is bug 572929.)

Luca, I'm not aware of any longstanding Gnome paradigm that menu titles have tooltips. The overall change we're making is converting notification area items, which have all sorts of inconsistent behaviors, into menus that behave consistently. Part of that consistent behavior is not having tooltips on their titles. That may make individual items slightly less efficient to use, but we are confident that the overall improvement outweighs any local awkwardness.

For usability issues especially, it's important to report problems rather than solutions. "Show tooltip with current sink and audio level" is not a problem, it's an assumed solution. "Can't see exact volume while changing it with scrollwheel" would be an example of a more valid bug report. "Can't access numeric value of sound volume" would also be an example of a more valid bug report.