Is a notification area icon a great idea for the mixer? Aside from the conceptual problems of having a permanent feature in the notification area, the mixer is something that is regularly used and should surely be placeable anywhere in the panel (and at a predictable place). What is the rationale for using a notification icon?

I haven't tried compiling the new volume control code recently (after striking a non-compiling dependency a while ago) so I can't criticise the current code directly. I'll try building it again tonight.

Using PulseAudio and the new gnome-volume-control:
- having multiple volume control applets doesn't make sense anymore (in most cases)
- when there _are_ multiple outputs, we need to be able to show them on-the-fly
- we need to be able to show information about the microphone input being used on-the-fly as well
- we don't need hacks to not show the volume applet (or an applet that doesn't actually work) when there's no sound output available

Having to use a notification icon says more about the panel's handling of applets than anything else, but all the above aren't easily fixable using a panel applet right now.

Created attachment 124916 [details] [review]
gnome-applets-remove-mixer.patch

Something like that should do.

I've just removed the mixer from SVN trunk. It will be gone from the gnome-applets 2.25.3 release.

The mixer applet has been reverted back, but "disabled" only. (for some clarity) 

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2009-January/msg00330.html