Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Pause button

["John Millikin" <jmillikin gmail com>]

(think I buggered up addresses on my reply, here's attempting to get
convo back on rb-devel)

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 6:02 PM, James Hartland
<james scriptmonster co uk> wrote:
> I respect that sometimes you have to be individual and go against the
> grain in order to improve things, but every other app on the planet on
> every OS has a Play button that turns into a Pause button.
>
Including Totem? If so, sounds like a bug report should be filed
against Totem stating that it violates the HIG.

> Sometimes
> you've just got to go with what users expect, rather than what you think
> might be better.
>
As a user, I expect GNOME applications to behave sensibly. If I wanted
them to behave like other applications, I would use those other
applications. I have no objection to playing follow-the-leader when
there's no particular reason to keep current behavior (though others
sometimes do), but when the HIG explicitly states that play/pause
buttons should not be merged that is a strong justification for not
merging them.

> The fact that the suggestion was one of the highest
> voted suggestions on Brainstorm so far to me suggests that I am not
> alone in thinking this is the wrong way to be doing it.
>
The suggestion is currently on page 10 of the suggestion list, behind
such ideas as porting OpenOffice to GTK+ and adding built-in support
for Subversion in Nautilus.

> If this really is something that goes against the whole Gnome thinking
> then could you not offer this as an option somewhere... "show pause icon
> during playback - yes/no". Then people could turn it on if they really
> wanted but by default you have it the "gnome way".
>
Rhythmbox was changed to remove the merged play/pause button in 0.9.3,
if I remember correctly. Presumably the developers would have added
such a configuration option if they had been interested in it.

>
> Thanks for getting back to me
>
>
>
>
>
> John Millikin wrote:
> > The HIG says specifically that the Play button should not be changed
> > to Pause[1]. I happen to find a mixed play/pause button confusing. If
> > the button displays a "pause" icon, does that mean the track is
> > currently paused, or that clicking on the button will pause it? Having
> > a clickbutton for play is easier, because a track is either playing or
> > not playing. I find myself agreeing completely with Warbo in that the
> > entire concept of a distinct "pause" button is a needless relic from
> > physical tape players.
> >
> > [1]
> > http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/toolbars.html#toolbars-media
>
>