On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Sense Hofstede
<qense@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Many people have said that adding all sound using applications is not
useful because they wouldn't use it. A few points:
* There is nothing that prevents you from ignoring the applications
in the list. In fact, I think we should make it very easy to quickly
access the main volume slider
By adding elements to the UI, you make it harder for people to make sense of it. You also make it harder to use it in the long term, if only because people will have to identify the right element among a larger total number of elements. For these reasons, every single additional element has a cost. Unfortunately, asking people to ignore those elements they don't need or like simply doesn't work because, if the elements are there, their brains will perceive them.
* The fact that some people don't use it doesn't mean that all people
don't use it. We've seen in this discussion that a lot of people came
up with uses for it quickly. We shouldn't oversimplify our desktop.
The important question when deciding if a feature is appropriate is not whether someone will use it: most of the time, you will find someone who wants it. The question is how many people will benefit from the feature and how many won't. Because, for those who won't, the feature is just clutter, which actually makes the UI less usable for them.
Keeping it clean is important, but it should be easy for people to get
extra tools when they want it. (Not that I think these volume sliders
are power tools.)
Providing tools people can install to satisfy specialized needs is the Right Thing to Do (TM). Trying to support specialized needs in the default user interface at the expense of a large majority of users is just plain wrong.
* It is easy to have a central place to control the sound, like Chow
Loong Jin already said. It's no use to go through all tabs and writing
a Firefox plugin doesn't provide much consistency and still isn't
central.