unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Jan-Christoph Borchardt
<jancborchardt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Why does clicking on the bar make the slider move in that direction
> and not to that specific point?
>
> I can’t imagine how often I accidentally turned the music to the
> loudest level and was really embarrassed. Other players I tested don’t
> do that (Youtube, Vimeo, some other web stuff, VLC).
>
> As Totems volume and Shotwells adjustment sliders do the same (very
> annoying behavior as proved in the Shotwell tests), I think it might
> be GTK standard behavior. So, who do I need to talk to to get this
> changed?
>
>
> If there already was a discussion about this, please point me to it. :)
>

I feel the same way here. The old volume control behaved the way you
want, but that was probably through an extra hack. The same behaviour
could be moved into Gtk, although it wouldn't be perfect.
I think it would totally make sense for the GtkVolumeButton widget
since it's a controlled case that we know is a particular way.
However, the GtkH-and-VScale widgets have Page Increment properties
which would be rendered useless by such a change. That _would_ be
contentious. So, something like the sound indicator, which uses the
general GtkHScale, would still need its own personal solution.

There may be a deeper story here about what people expect. In Lucid,
and especially _before_ Lucid, the volume slider had quite a big,
clunky handle that said "grab me!" (complete with rather obvious grip
marks). Now it's a smaller gadget. That does three things: it looks
fantastic, it's harder to grab, and it looks more like an indicator
than the control itself.
(And I should stress the “looks fantastic” part. It also, potentially,
feels fantastic).


Dylan