2010/5/3 Martín Soto wrote: > Providing tools people can install to satisfy specialized needs is the Right > Thing to Do (TM). Trying to support specialized needs in the default user > interface at the expense of a large majority of users is just plain wrong.
I agree, as long as installing special tools is made insanely easy. Firefox add-ons is the role model of how to do this. > >> * It is easy to have a central place to control the sound, like Chow >> Loong Jin already said. It's no use to go through all tabs and writing >> a Firefox plugin doesn't provide much consistency and still isn't >> central. > > The book "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman explains this > issue quite well (look for term "mapping"). More direct, spatial connections > between controls and the items they control can improve interaction quite a > lot. Norman's direct mapping would be the best model if each application had volume completely independent of each other. This isn't true though, as there is a system-wide volume control that changes all applications at once, thus making individual application volumes relative to each other. A centralized control that shows in one place the relative weights of all applications is a good design in this case, IMHO. This way one can give more or less emphasis to one application with respect to the others, without having to switch between applications. This doesn't means one couldn't also have one standard application volume control for each application as a windicator; in this case, having redundant controls wouldn't hurt - as they support different use cases (controlling sound in the current application vs setting global sound preferences). _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
