unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Alex Launi wrote on 12/12/12 16:26:
> 
> Hello, we on the webapps team are looking for design input with 
> respect to the sound menu. We'd like a more elegant solution for 
> dealing with multiple players, for instance having 4 or 5 youtube
> tabs open at a time. The current spec (not actually implemented)
> says to just have multiple players appear as new entries in the
> sound menu. This will work but just seems like it could rapidly
> grow out of control with, as I said, 4 or 5 tabs open. This case
> seems unique to webapps, most desktop players are single instance.
> Does anyone have any suggestions for how the sound menu could be
> modified, or how we should approach this? Thanks!!
> 
> ...

Jeremy Bicha had a good point that a proper YouTube Web app would be
less likely to (or would never) have multiple windows or tabs.

But if you follow a link to a video from Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail,
for example, it is still useful for that to appear in the sound menu
- -- especially if the link opened in the background.

Personally shared links often have terrible context ("omg you have to
see this"), and are often redirected, so it may not be obvious that a
link you're opening in the background is a video at all. When sound
starts playing unexpectedly, the sound menu could be your one-stop
shop to control it.

So, I agree with showing each YouTube page as its own entry in the
sound menu. If that often causes the menu to bloat, then maybe we
should streamline the menu's playback controls in general.

That does not mean normal browser pages should behave completely like
Web apps, though. For example, as you've probably noticed, having
items bob in and out of the Launcher just because you're currently on
a particular Web site is asinine.

Further, there is no need to make this YouTube-specific. Why should
you have to install one app for Tudou, another for YouTube, another
for Vimeo, and so on, just to control playback of videos in general?

It shouldn't matter where the video is hosted, and it needn't. A
browser extension could detect use of the Flash plugin, <video>, or
<audio>, on *any* open Web page, and insert an entry in the sound menu
for that page.

- -- 
mpt

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