"Sound Effects" should not be the default tab in Sound Preferences

[Dave Lillis]

Clicking the volume icon in the indicator applet offers the "Sound Preferences" option.

Here, the default tab is "Sound Effects", to allow the user to change the sound theme. This is an action that is not likely to be used in the course of normal computer usage (and certainly not very often).

The default tab should be "Applications", as adjusting the sound balance between running applications is a task that is far more common.

[Sam L. (somethinginteres)]

Perhaps the "Applications" tab should also be moved to be the first tab available also? Having it at the very end doesn't seem like the logical place. Rather, that is probably the spot that "Sound Effects" should occupy. For now I have marked this bug as "Confirmed".

[Vish (vish)]

With the new sound menu changes accessing the Application volume tab is more sensible

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

maybe it should be fixed upstream in a better way. generally it looks pretty cool if the first tab is opened. jumping to the last tab on clicking 'sound preferences' maybe wont be cool^^ visually.

on this bug is it something sound indicator should fix? Connor?

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

if no app is playing sound the last tab looks empty (attached) that is not pleasant. Sound preference window needs a redesign ;-)

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

I've started reviewing the sound preferences dialog, and started to redesign it too, but IMHO this is not really a papercut. See the progress on my blog, http://bit.ly/9Hpm6X, and follow-ups on http://bit.ly/avQUuD. Ideas, suggestions are welcome, as always.

[Vish (vish)]

@Robert Roth :
Yup, Redesigning the Sound prefs is not a papercut . Personally , i would like a lot more sound preferences exposed ;-)
This bug is to not change the default System > Preferences > Sound. Selecting the Sound prefs from the system menu would be the present behavior and open the Sound effects tab.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoundMenu is the new sound menu plan.
During the UDS , we discussed the use cases for the sound menu. The most discussed was how to address issues of users trying to attend calls or running recordings and to control different application volumes.
Often the requested "feature" was to expose the volume controls of every running app into the menu. [ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ideatorrent/idea/24627 , https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg01636.html ]

Now, with the sound menu in mind which tab would the user most likely want to access?
How often will the user be looking to change the settings in Sound Effects , Hardware,Input,Output tabs ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

it basically means you need to call gnome-volume-control with --page=applications

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Attached branch fixes bug.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Fixed in trunk.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the fix is in 0.4 which has just been uploaded

[Greg A (etulfetulf)]

@Vish There aren’t going to be application-specific volume controls in the new sound menu. [1]

[1] https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg01831.html