Lucid Sound Applet Gets Improved

By , Published March 13, 2010

One of Benjamin Humphrey’s “16 things to improve in Ubuntu 10.04” concerned Lucid’s new-look sound applet – a small, square, inconsistent little box.

Some of his gripes were: -

  • The slider is too short and doesn't let you fine tune volume properly
  • The max volume icon doesn't have enough padding, compared to the no volume icon
  • The background colour for the slider looks out of place, it isn't necessary.

Well a much-improved sound applet landed over the weekend blitzing many of those issues.

Applause all round, I think.

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. 16 things that could be improved in Ubuntu 10.04
  2. Lucid Has A Sexy New Volume Indicator
  3. Mark Speaks; New Artwork For Lucid, Awesome Messaging Applet Improvements Coming, View On ChromeOS, More!
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  • Anonymous

    yehaaaaaaaaa!!!! much better now!!!

    • Mohan

      Yeah it does!

  • Anonymous

    Will we be seeing this in Lucid: http://www.hadess.net/2010/03/speaker-testing.html ?

    • Anonymous

      Hope so

    • Yfrwlf

      Nice, one of the things missing from Ubuntu audio configuration.

  • Anonymous

    why does the slider look so pixelated and out of focus though?

    • daas88

      i noticed that too! But they’ll surely fix it.

      • http://dylantaylor.wordpress.com/ aliendude5300

        It’s purely cosmetical, not functional. It should be easy to change.

  • Anonymous

    Hey, that’s cool.

  • Arthur Cruz

    Much nicer!
    But I don`t like this kind of behavior: click, then click`n slide.
    I`d rather: click’n slide.

    I’m not on Linux right now, but I think Rhythmbox slider is the one I appreciate.
    It`s an icon, but you Click’n slide. Just it!
    Don’t y’all agree?

    • daas88

      The thing is that the rhythmbox slider is more centered in the window, but this applet is on the top border of the screen, so it could be a bit tricky to raise the volume. Besides, it’s very handy to have the sound preferences so easily accessible, and you couldn’t put that in a slider button.

    • Noel

      I agree, but I prefer the Karmic version best. Just hover over the icon and scroll. I don’t know why we’re losing this functionality. Also, I keep volume at 75% due to my sound system being hooked up, and this indicator gives you no idea of where the volume is #s-wise. Karmic you hover over and get the percentage >.<

    • ikt

      It`s an icon, but you Click’n slide. Just it!
      Don’t y’all agree?
      ————
      You can click and slide the current volume bar, the vertical volume bar in rythembox is the worst volume bar ever.

      Can you explain how clicking and then sliding is easier than just sliding?

      • Arthur Cruz

        Just open Rhythmbox and you will see what I mean.
        I really like it, clicking the icon jumps the step of clicking the bar do move it.

        If you click and hold you can already slide the volume up or down, no need to click the icon and then click (again) the bar.

        I agree with Daniel Scott, this behavior works out inside a window, not in the top panel. I wish I could figure out a nice click-economic way to conciliate my needs.

        • ikt

          If you click and hold
          –
          You didn’t explain why am I clicking and holding when I could just be sliding!

          Just compare it to vlc and then see what I mean.

        • ikt

          If you click and hold
          –
          You didn’t explain why am I clicking and holding when I could just be sliding!

          Just compare it to vlc and then see what I mean.

        • ikt

          If you click and hold
          –
          You didn’t explain why am I clicking and holding when I could just be sliding!

          Just compare it to vlc and then see what I mean.

  • daas88

    I read on webupd8 that the humanity icons are going to turn purple. Is that true? Please tell me it isn’t! I’ve been visiting omgubuntu all day to see if Joey post something about it

  • Anonymous

    I still prefer my keyboard’s media keys and my Logitech head set’s sound controls.

  • Anonymous

    One last tweak I’d like to see to it is the ability to place the cursor over the sound icon, and control it via mouse scroll.

  • Morty

    As others have said, I’d be happiest if you could easily slide it up and down with the mouse’s scroll wheel. Other than that, it looks good. I’m glad Benjamin’s suggestions are being taken into account. One has to wonder what would’ve happened had he not posted the list of them here.

    • ikt

      You can scroll it up and down with the scroll wheel.

  • Anonymous

    ya much nicer u like it this way

  • http://dylantaylor.wordpress.com/ aliendude5300

    Well, at least this is MUCH better…

  • Anonymous

    of course it could just be the window theme that makes it nicer, dark is always more attractive on my desktop :P

  • kaysar

    look nice can’t wait to see the final version of lucid

  • http://danielsouzat.wordpress.com/ Daniel de Souza Telles

    You forgot the dummy line. Why it wasn’t removed?

  • Erik

    Two things still annoy me about the top panel… 1.) in the ambiance theme (and possibly others) when I click on the memenu the date and time turns brownish and 2.) in all the themes I’ve tried the network thing doesn’t turn a color like all the other buttons in the notification area.

  • Anonymous

    Cool! I don’t know if they did that because of the attention his post gathered, or just because it was coming already but it is way better.

    I hope Canonical keeps changing stuff for the better.

    • http://mpt.net.nz/ mpt

      There are two changes shown in Joey-Elijah’s screenshot: the slider is wider , and it uses the proper background color in Light themes . Conor Curran implemented the former, and Ken Wimer fixed the latter, both before Benjamin published his post (though the updates apparently didn’t appear in time). I had not reported a bug for the slider length, but I had mentioned it to Conor last Monday, and he was working on it early in the week.

      You don’t need to put your hopes in Canonical for every bug fix: you’re welcome to fix, or to pay someone to fix, any of the other bugs yourself. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-sound Or you can torture-test the menu and report any bugs you find.

    • http://mpt.net.nz/ mpt

      There are two changes shown in Joey-Elijah’s screenshot: the slider is wider , and it uses the proper background color in Light themes . Conor Curran implemented the former, and Ken Wimer fixed the latter, both before Benjamin published his post (though the updates apparently didn’t appear in time). I had not reported a bug for the slider length, but I had mentioned it to Conor last Monday, and he was working on it early in the week.

      You don’t need to put your hopes in Canonical for every bug fix: you’re welcome to fix, or to pay someone to fix, any of the other bugs yourself. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-sound Or you can torture-test the menu and report any bugs you find.

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    anything about the scroll?

  • alex

    I generally don’t like slider, because you have to look to the left and to the right icon, to understand where should you slide. I prefer the icon from VLC Player (bottom right) – slider gets wider when sound volume increases.
    http://images.videolan.org/images/screenshots/vlc-win32.jpg

  • http://dylanmccall.blogspot.com/ Dylan McCall

    They also fixed the volume icon, which wasn’t a blatant enough MacOS clone :P (Speaker part was too small).

  • http://twitter.com/krazybluez Ankan Pratik Roy

    I still think that the slider button is ‘big’.. if they make it smaller that is..
    It’s this thing which gripes me in Ubuntu that most of the things are too much of ‘In your face types’.. as if we all are blind.. :p

  • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

    Looks a lot better. Now they just need to remove “mute all” and fix the slider image button thingy. It’s just a smidge too large, and looks really pixelated and funky at the moment.

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Mmmhm. I agree.

  • Anonymous

    Such a great improvement!

  • http://schijnoplosser.nl/ mths

    I’d prefer a vertical slider but I’m okay with this. Why have one option (mute) above and the other below? Doesn’t it make more sense to make both options below the slider (and make them look like buttons)?

    • http://mpt.net.nz/ mpt

      The idea of having “Mute All” as the first item is that if sound starts blaring unexpectedly (and you don’t have a Mute key on your keyboard), you can stop it with a quick drag to select the first item in the menu. It’s quicker than opening the menu and then dragging the slider.

      Why should they look like buttons? Menu items don’t normally look like buttons.

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        I can’t say i have a preference either way as I just my keyboard to mute, but could the right-hand speaker icon not also be a ‘mute’ button when clicked?

        • http://mpt.net.nz/ mpt

          Dragging the slider to the right increases the volume, so I don’t think it would be discoverable that an icon at the right end of the slider mutes it.

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        I can’t say i have a preference either way as I just my keyboard to mute, but could the right-hand speaker icon not also be a ‘mute’ button when clicked?

    • http://mpt.net.nz/ mpt

      The idea of having “Mute All” as the first item is that if sound starts blaring unexpectedly (and you don’t have a Mute key on your keyboard), you can stop it with a quick drag to select the first item in the menu. It’s quicker than opening the menu and then dragging the slider.

      Why should they look like buttons? Menu items don’t normally look like buttons.

  • http://www.thekiplingconspiracy.co.uk christiegrinham

    The karmic one is still better. Nice and simple.

  • http://www.thekiplingconspiracy.co.uk christiegrinham

    The karmic one is still better. Nice and simple.

  • Anonymous

    Nice article and does look a bit better.

    Another sound improvement would be if Canonical were to drop “PulseAudio” and stick with alsa sound.

    But I’m probably dreaming…

  • Anonymous

    Nice article and does look a bit better.

    Another sound improvement would be if Canonical were to drop “PulseAudio” and stick with alsa sound.

    But I’m probably dreaming…

  • http://www.geniuslife.wordpress.com/ Júlio

    Better… almost perfect

  • http://www.geniuslife.wordpress.com/ Júlio

    Better… almost perfect

  • http://ahmed-abouzaid.blogspot.com/ Ahmed M. AbouZaid

    nice : )

    but what about something like this ?
    http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/8228/soundapplet.png

  • Anonymous

    Come to wait, is just an alpha, in April when we will go lucid and since then we complain.

  • Anonymous

    Come to wait, is just an alpha, in April when we will go lucid and since then we complain.