Re: [Usability] New Sound Preferences and Volume Control

[Andy Owen <andy-gnome-usability ultra-premium com>]

On Wed, 2008-12-10 at 14:03 -0500, Philip Ganchev wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 5:35 AM, Dokuro <dario soto gmail com> wrote:
> > ... lots of people use the master
> > volume control (seating next of the notification area) with the mouse
> > wheel; ...
> 
> And those who have a hardware volume knob usually don't bother with
> the software control.

I'm not so sure about that. It is typically much more convenient to keep
your hand on the mouse and do that. It is something that you can survey
pretty easily to get an actual answer. But in any case, detecting if a
person has a hardware volume knob is impossible, and there are plenty of
people without them, so I don't think we should optimise for the case
that a person does have one.

> 
> > ... the window list applet ... can
> > control an application's volume by using the wheel on top of a window
> > name in the list.
> ...
> 
> Again - why do you need to change the volume for individual windows or apps?

I would have thought that it is typically what a person wants when they
adjust the volume. When I turn down the volume of my music player, it is
probably because the song is too loud, not because the combined sound of
the song, plus the notification noises from my instant messenger are too
loud. The times when you want a master volume control exist too, but I
would have thought they were a bit less common, even if most of the time
they have close to the same result.


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