When playing, "Play" button should read "Pause"

[Jean-Francois Arseneau]

To indicate to users that pressing on "Play" while the audio is playing will pause, instead of pressing on "Stop" which will bring the seeker back to the beginning, the "Play" button should have "Pause" written instead, with the appropriate icon.

[Jean-Francois Arseneau (jf-arseneau)]

Just a note, Rhythmbox doesn't change Play into Pause, but Totem and Banshee do.

[David Corrales (davidcorrales)]

I'm reopening this bug because I feel that our current implementation is not ideal.
I'm sending a mailing list message for further discussion.

[Zeth (zeth0)]

Not sure if I am allowed to moan here but it took me three attempts to figure out how to pause. Ending up back at zero is not fun when you are tying to edit something. The current set-up is not intuitive at all. Trying to remember invisible options is hard when you are trying to listen to your file.

A billion tape/video recorders have pause. By using the << Rewind and >> Forward buttons, you are intentionally adopting the tape recorder metaphor.

If you want less buttons then why not make stop keep your position? Double-clicking stop could then return to zero.

[Jean-Francois Arseneau (jf-arseneau)]

On Sun, 2007-18-02 at 02:35 +0000, Zeth wrote:
> If you want less buttons then why not make stop keep your position?
> Double-clicking stop could then return to zero.
>

Unfortunately, that would lead us to the same problem of people saying
"It took me a while before figuring out that you can double-click stop
to make it return to zero!" or "I accidently double-clicked it instead
of single-clicking it, argh!"

I'd have to say that the single Play/Pause in a single button, what I'll
call the Totem Play/Pause for the sake of simplicity, is still very
informative and beyond sticking to absolute usability theories of "Well,
a single button can't do two things!" I think it would feel much more
intuitive and usable for users than what we currently have, or even
adding a seperate pause button (the HIG Play/Pause). I would have to
say that the only reason you don't have a single Play/Pause button in
real life is that you can't do that on a real life device, while in
software land, it can be done. Actually, I think there is a real life
device that does it, but I'm not entirely sure since I don't own one, an
iPod. I think this was mentioned in the last debate.

So, there is precedent. It is informative. And I don't think we're
encouraging something so horrible to usability by using a Totem
Play/Pause button.

- Jean-Francois Arseneau

[Zeth (zeth0)]

>> Double-clicking stop could then return to zero.

>Unfortunately, that would lead us to the same problem

Fair enough, it was just a suggestion. I would agree that the "Totem approach" is best. I also find it disturbing that the P key does not pause/play as in Totem, Audacity and almost every other media program.

[David Corrales (davidcorrales)]

The tooltips will change for 1.0