Not having a muted icon for the volume applet causes confusion

Bug #444548 reported by Ara Pulido
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
GNOME media utilities
Invalid
Medium
gnome-media (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Low
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs
humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Loïc Minier

Bug Description

Binary package hint: humanity-icon-theme

In Human icons we used to have a very distinguished way to know whether the volume was completely turned down, or it was muted. humanity doesn't have a distinction in the volume applet.

This is what often happens to me:

I see the silent icon and I think I have to turn the volume up. Nothing happens. Then I realize that it is because it is muted, so I unmute. But, as I had turned the volume up as first try, when unmuted the sound is very very loud.

I think it is necessary to have a way to distinguish both states.

Revision history for this message
Ara Pulido (ara) wrote :

humanity-icon-theme:
  Installed: 0.4.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.4.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.4.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

summary: - Not having a muted icon for the volume applet cause confusion
+ Not having a muted icon for the volume applet causes confusion
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

The volume low and the volume mute are distinctly different icons. I dont understand the problem here.

Could you add a screenshot of the humanity volume low , volume mute. Also screenshots of the same icons in Human theme.

It can help us understand that the problem better.

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

I think what you have reported here is a bug in the volume applet , where increasing the volume [when muted] does not cause the volume to increase.

But unmuting returns the volume , this is a known bug , in the Karmic volume applet . Not sure of the bug number though.

Revision history for this message
Ara Pulido (ara) wrote :

For me, muted volume and volume down has the same exact icon (attached).

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → New
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

I dont understand what the problem here is.
There are only 4 icons for volume.> high , medium , low and mute , you can see the different icons in the /usr/share/Humanity/status/24/ ,
The volume mute is very different from volume low.

I dont understand why this bug is filed in humanity. and these are the same icons in human too /usr/share/Human/16/status/

The real problem here is > if volume is lowered fully , the status changes to volume mute... I'm still not sure what needs to be done in humanity.

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Loïc Minier (lool) wrote :

Is having the same icon for volume level zero and muted a regression?

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Hmm , ok found the difference >
when volume is 0 it will show the same icon as mute , but as soon as the volume is increased even a little bit , the volume low icon will be shown .

previously the human theme seems to wrongly use the /usr/share/icons/Human/16x16/status/stock_volume-0 as a symlink to /usr/share/icons/Human/16x16/status/audio-volume-low icon. Which i believe is misleading.
This makes the user think that there is little sound even when there is zero sound.

Revision history for this message
Loïc Minier (lool) wrote :

@Design team, please comment on whether you want the Human (old) behavior of using "low volume" or "muted" icon (current Humanity) for volume zero.

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Canonical User Experience and Design team (canonical-ux)
status: Incomplete → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Loïc Minier (lool) wrote :

Or do you want a new icon altogether?

Revision history for this message
Ara Pulido (ara) wrote :

I think the zero volume icon should be the same as low, but without the darken of the last trunk. That will make the difference between the two.

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

ara ,
Yeah, my thoughts too.

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
assignee: Canonical User Experience and Design team (canonical-ux) → mac_v (drkvi-a)
status: Triaged → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

When designing Notify OSD, we decided that mutedness should be orthogonal to volume -- that is, muted loudness should look different from muted quietness. This was so that you can get advance warning of how loud things are likely to be the moment you unmute.

In the volume applet we don't really have room to distinguish muted loudness from muted quietness, but we can still distinguish muted sound vs. zero volume. So, what Ara said. :-)

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Fixed in rev: 398

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
assignee: mac_v (drkvi-a) → nobody
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

The volume applet is different from the one in in jaunty , the new volume applet is now part of the notification area.

I'v added a new icon for stock_volume-0 , but adding this icon does *not* fix the issue.
The volume 0 uses the volume mute icon.
So this is now a bug in the volume applet.

Vish (vish)
Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Loïc Minier (lool)
Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Loïc Minier (lool)
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package humanity-icon-theme - 0.4.1ubuntu1

---------------
humanity-icon-theme (0.4.1ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * Switch to native packaging as I can't get the proper changes in the diff
    otherwise.
  * Update Humanity{,-Dark}/status/24/stock_volume-0.svg from
    lp:humanity@r398; adds a separate icon for non-muted volume applet at
    volume zero; LP: #444548.
  * Add Humanity{,-Dark}/actions/16/system-shutdown-panel.svg from
    lp:humanity@r402; adds new black and white shutdown menu icon for then new
    indicator-session shutdown icon; LP: #432635.
  * Update Humanity{,-Dark}/apps/{22,24,48}/gsd-xrandr.svg to icons from
    lp:humanity@r403; adds new black and white icons for display capplet and a
    Humanity-Dark symlink; LP: #443311.

 -- Loic Minier <email address hidden> Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:05:49 +0200

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Loïc Minier (lool) wrote :

There was an issue with this update:
16:13 < mac_v> lool: * Different icons for volume mute and volume-0 , LP:
               #444548 , was wrongly done... the wrong icon was replaced and
               the same icon was used for both mute and 0

This is pending a fix by the artwork team.

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Released → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream. Thanks in advance!

Changed in gnome-media (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in gnome-media (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
importance: Undecided → Low
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package humanity-icon-theme - 0.4.1ubuntu4

---------------
humanity-icon-theme (0.4.1ubuntu4) karmic; urgency=low

  [ Kenneth Wimer ]
  * Moving this to ubuntu-art-pkg team
  * Editing apport icon to red ; LP: #450825 .
  * Adding 24px Bluetooth icon and renaming previous greyscale icon to
    bluetooth-active. Removed app icons from Humanity-Dark which are no longer needed ; LP: #437162
  * Edits to user status icons to avoid using English characters in the bubbles ; LP: #439743
  * Adding gpm-* icons ; LP: #449334
  * Adding U1 icons ; LP: #438641
  * Correcting drive-* label ; LP: #436462
  * Different icons for volume mute and volume-0 , LP: #444548
  * updated to include various small changes to documents-*, synaptic actions
  * merged into release packaging and ready for upload

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * debian/control: Add Vcs-Bzr: header.

 -- Kenneth Wimer <email address hidden> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:05:08 +0200

Changed in humanity-icon-theme (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Released
Changed in gnome-media:
status: Unknown → Incomplete
Changed in gnome-media:
importance: Unknown → Medium
Changed in gnome-media:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote :

Since humanity (and the ubuntu-mono themes) ship different icons for volume = 0 and mute, and at this point in most cases people will change volume levels using the sound indicator, I think we can mark the bug against gnome-media as Invalid (like it was set upstream).

Setting the sound level to zero in gnome-media still sets the sound to muted, but the icon in the indicator will show users the difference anyway. When muted, opening the indicator-sound menu also allows unmuting by just moving the sound level slider widget.

Changed in gnome-media (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Invalid
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