Re: [Usability] Mute in GNOME mixer applet does not have correct behavior

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

On Sat, 2006-03-18 at 19:57 +0100, Jaap Haitsma wrote:
> Hi,
> Conclusion
> ------------
> What do the usability people think of this??

stock_volume-0 is the worst icon ever. What exactly does "0" mean, when
you have your volume set to 24%? The optimal behavior would be to
restore the volume to where the user /started/ from, when dragging the
slider to 0 in the first place, not to restore to it was last set after
they let go (which would as you point out, in this case, always be 0).

Their should be 4 states only. High, medium, low, and mute. Something
between low and mute doesn't say anything. The volume-0 icon has no
audio waves in the icon, but gets used up to 25%, so the user may still
have quite a bit of audio coming out of the speakers in fact. This seems
just as confusing to me. How often are people to drag to 0, rather than
just clicking on mute?

I highly recommend the suggestion in my first paragraph, to use the
volume where they /started/ sliding from, when dragging the slider to 0,
and later pressing unmute. The volume control surely must be able to
keep this state.

-- dobey