Re: [Usability] New beeps in gtk

["BJörn Lindqvist" <bjourne gmail com>]

> Hardware already takes a positive approach -- keyboards and mouse
> buttons are noisy, and deliberately so.
>
> Software has long taken a negative approach, mainly because its sound
> abilities have been crappy, confined to loud and ugly beeps. In the

Negative sound effects are annoying. If you open Notepad and then open
the file selector which is modal, you can't refocus Notepad's main
window and Windows plays a very irritating beep. I think sound effects
have a tendancy to amplify the action. So when you get annoyed about
stupid modal dialogs you get even more annoyed when you hear a stupid
beep. And being annoyed is not good.

Emacs also makes a sound when you press Ctrl+G. I think it is good
sometimes and bad other times.

> It would be interesting to try a positive approach, but it would need
> careful engineering to produce sounds that were subtle and reassuring.

In Internet Explorer, when you click on a click it makes a nice
clicking sound. I think that is a really nice example of a positive
sound because that reassures you that you managed to click on
something.

It will be very fun trying out GTK:s new sounds whether they will be
good or bad.

--
mvh Björn