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Bug 162949 - change play/pause button to a play toggle button
change play/pause button to a play toggle button
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Product: totem
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: General Totem maintainer(s)
General Totem maintainer(s)
Depends on:
Blocks: 159824
 
 
Reported: 2005-01-04 21:13 UTC by Bryan W Clark
Modified: 2010-11-19 22:08 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
patch (23.17 KB, patch)
2005-02-14 05:10 UTC, William Jon McCann
needs-work Details | Review
screenshot (28.32 KB, image/png)
2005-02-14 17:47 UTC, William Jon McCann
  Details
updated patch for HEAD (13.56 KB, patch)
2005-10-31 23:58 UTC, William Jon McCann
none Details | Review

Description Bryan W Clark 2005-01-04 21:13:03 UTC
From the mail I wrote to the usability list:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-January/msg00020.html

Accessibility gets messed up by having the buttons change on click (from play to
pause) the way to get around this issue is to have your play button be a toggle
button.   People understand when the play button toggles down that the way to
stop/pause play will be to untoggle the button and the button never changes it's
value.  I've planned on putting this into HIG recommendations, but I need to
catch up with calum for a little discussion before writing it in.
Comment 1 William Jon McCann 2005-02-14 05:10:03 UTC
Created attachment 37450 [details] [review]
patch

I agree with toggle button reasoning.  However, I have found that users really
do respond well to the pause symbol.  I can only speculate as to why this is
true: it corresponds to the real world devices that they know, pausing is a
positive action rather than negative (un-playing).  The attached patch adds two
mutually exclusive toggle buttons, one for play, one for pause.
Comment 2 Ronald Bultje 2005-02-14 10:20:03 UTC
William, what is the effect for the UI? Does it change?
Comment 3 William Jon McCann 2005-02-14 17:47:06 UTC
Created attachment 37463 [details]
screenshot

Yup, the UI changes a bit.
Comment 4 Bastien Nocera 2005-02-14 22:25:06 UTC
Either the toggle button is in, and the pause icon is out, or we keep things the
same way. Having two toggle buttons really acting as radio buttons is dead
confusing. I'd rather keep it the same way for now, until this gets thrashed out
and tested.
Comment 5 Bryan W Clark 2005-03-24 19:43:01 UTC
Having some kind of [>/||] icon for the button seems like a good idea.  Having
the two buttons is probably going to be confusing for people on what to do to
pause or play. 

I'll see if I can find an icon that would be usable, could this patch be
reworked for that?
Comment 6 Ronald Bultje 2005-06-08 13:09:17 UTC
Am I the only one who thinks a toggle button is hideous for this purpose? So, as
far as I understand, the UI that we currently have is actually pretty good, but
has accessibility issues because we change the purpose of one button "randomly"
(play/pause), thereby confusing apps such as gnopernicus.

Is it possible to make play/pause two buttons (normal, not toggle) and hide
either one depending on state? That should fix the accessibility bug, while
still allowing the same UI experience as we have now for other users...
Comment 7 William Jon McCann 2005-06-08 14:20:51 UTC
I'm not sold one way or the other.  However, I think one can argue that it is
easier for the user to immediately ascertain the state of the tool by observing
whether the Play button or Pause button is toggled.  As opposed to searching for
and parsing the "Playing" text in the status bar.

As it is now the button indicate the inverse of the playing state.  One can
argue that this requires a brain cycle to interpret.

Comment 8 Christian Kirbach 2005-08-03 20:19:46 UTC
FYI: Bug 159824 is open for rhythmbox with a very similar matter.
Comment 9 Andrey Tatarinov 2005-10-31 20:09:42 UTC
muine does have play toggle button and I really like it's behaviour. voting for
big-play-toggle button
Comment 10 Bastien Nocera 2005-10-31 20:15:41 UTC
William, any chance to update your patch against the current CVS?
Comment 11 William Jon McCann 2005-10-31 23:58:37 UTC
Created attachment 54164 [details] [review]
updated patch for HEAD
Comment 12 Bastien Nocera 2005-11-26 00:23:18 UTC
I can see a problem with a lot of theme where the "hover" look is the same as
the released one, meaning that you can't really see whether the button is one
way or the other when the mouse is over it.
Comment 13 Bastien Nocera 2006-02-02 22:35:23 UTC
I've tried it, and not liked it (sorry Jon for the wasted time making the patch).
Status quo it will be...
Comment 14 Frederik Elwert 2010-11-19 22:08:07 UTC
Is this decision still definitive? It looks like it is now official in the HIG that applications should “not change Play to Pause while the clip is playing” [1]. Rhythmbox, for that part, also uses a toggle button. I guess a bit of consistency among GNOME applications would be nice.


[1] http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/toolbars-appearance.html.de#toolbars-media