Re: suggestion: unified media player control panel applet

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp redhat com>]

On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 17:20 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> Hi there. My first post to this list; Reinout van Schouwen suggested it
> as the best place for this idea.
> 
> Most GNOME media player applications stick an icon in the notification
> area. Rhythmbox, Muine, etc - they all have their own code to stick an
> icon in there for controlling the player. This is unnecessary
> duplication of effort. It's also bad interface design; the notification
> area is meant for notification, not app interaction, and usually these
> icons cannot be turned off. I had an idea to fix all these problems.

Why would you be running more than one of these at a time?  Also, the
notification area really doesn't have any mandates (which is one of the
problems with it).

> The developers of GNOME media player apps should get together and design
> a single panel applet for doing basic playback control to replace all
> the separate notification area icons that are currently used. It would
> be much more sane to have a panel applet with play / pause, forward,
> back and any other necessary controls than for each app to have its own
> notification area icon for these functions. The controls would apply to
> any and all currently open media players.
> 
> A combined panel applet reduces duplication of effort, cuts down on
> notification area pollution, allows the user more control of whether and
> where controls need to be present, and is more convenient than each app
> having its own notification area icon.

But how would this work?  Which app would it be controlling when I hit
play?  Is this like a universal remote?  Selecting the app and then
hitting play seems wrong.  People will ask why is my favorite xyz
multimedia app not an option.  I think it comes down to select one media
player and use that.  If it is not good enough to do everything you need
then that should be fixed - not the applet/notification icon.  I do
agree however there should be a consistent way to have apps not add
their tray icon.

> If I could write a line of code, I'd write this myself. Unfortunately, I
> can't, so someone else will have to do it :). It shouldn't be very
> complicated, though. Do people like this idea?
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-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp redhat com>