Natty sound menu adds playlist support

By , Published January 31, 2011

Ubuntu Natty developements

The Sound Menu of Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha sees the return of play list support – an easy way to access your favourite track line-ups in Banshee without needing to open the app itself.

Screenshot-2

Elephants, or readers with good memories, may recall that this very feature was proposed for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.10 – and did begin to see implementation. Sadly various issues and rethinking put paid to both it and the track scrubber (remember that?). The final release of Ubuntu 10.10 saw neither included.

Whether or not a similar fate is beholden to the Natty version remains to be seen, but for now at least Alpha testers can play around with initial playlist support in their Sound Menu.

Related posts:

  1. Spotify Sound Menu support for Ubuntu is coming along nicely…
  2. Clementine music player adds Sound menu support
  3. Banshee adds initial Meerkat Sound Menu support
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
  • http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev

    What a great post for start of the week and what a great improvement,hope they’ll keep that for Natty.

  • http://slimshady91.myopenid.com/ Tarek

    Ohh ,, This is awesome !

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VWKDYGJOF23MM4G7XRXP6DRJEQ David .

    I just really want more sound options in my sound menu. Let me turn down my music to watch a video from the sound menu! Per-Application volume sliders is my dream for that menu.

    • Anonymous

      i think i saw a mockup somewhere for this, damn where is it! ;/

      i think this has a good chance of becoming reality

    • Anonymous

      i think i saw a mockup somewhere for this, damn where is it! ;/

      i think this has a good chance of becoming reality

    • http://twitter.com/tonyhartfield tonyhartfield

      per application volume controls would indeed be awesome

      even better for me would also be an option to enable a sources lists so I could switch from my netbooks soundcard to my pulseaudio server in 2 clicks instead of having to open sound preferences. I guess not many people use a pulse server but it would be a really useful option for those of us who do.

  • http://twitter.com/ethana2 ethana2

    You know what’d be awesome? If the sound menu would alert the user of multiple sound sources at one time and automatically mute or pause one of them, so if I was listening to music and started a youtube video, the music would just pause instead of me having to go up pause it, watch the video, and then un-pause it. Thoughts?

    • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

      I think I like the concept, but how would it decide what’s more important? If you’d just go by what was started most recently, moving your mouse over an annoying flash ad could pause your music – and that would be kind of annoying.

      Still, if someone could figure out a good way to do it, it would be fantastic. I think you should post a feature request somewhere (not sure if the sound menu is the right place, but maybe they can point you to somewhere else, if nothing else).

      • Anonymous

        There is an implementation for that:
        https://launchpad.net/earcandy

        But it doesnt pause, it just mutes afaik

        • Anonymous

          That is now built in

          Sound indicator –> Sound Preferences —> Applications tab

          or something like that :P

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LOR655GR4ZFHCMSV7FW5ROPSAA Cliff W

        It’s kinda lame to put the burden on the user, but I can’t think of another way to get it right.

        There would need to be a gnome-preferences list of “media players”, including things like Flash, that would allow the user to manually prioritize them (Skype above Banshee, Flash to the bottom, etc).

        Then, if they wanted to get clever, they could put a “trainer” into the menu, so that when a second app tries to play something, the user is prompted whether or not to allow it to. Based on these inputs, the preference list could be created.

        Interesting, but I think I’d rather have resources go to something else =)

      • http://www.google.com/profiles/ISantop Ian

        Exactly. I ran into a similar issue with a UI I’m working on. We wanted users to group windows on workspaces based on what they were doing with the window, a concept we called “tasking”. As a promotional idea, we tried to make it so that new windows automatically went to a different desktop, or “Auto-Tasking”.

        However, we couldn’t just stick new windows on different desktops, since what if the window was related to what the user was doing? There just isn’t a facility for determining what a particular window is for, so in the end, we scrapped the idea and made it easier for the user to task the windows manually.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi

      That’s really nerving. I tend to scroll over the sound icon to mute rhythmbox but then I don’t hear anything anymore, then I need two clicks (1 menu, 2 pause button).
      And after the video I mostly forget to unpause rhythmbox.

    • ean5533

      This would be a good idea to post to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

      • Anonymous

        and a good idea to be wasted and never noticed by canonical.

        • ean5533

          Are you going to propose another way to get his idea implemented? Or are you just here to post bitter, cynical remarks?

          • Anonymous

            there is no other way.

          • http://cldx.blogspot.com/ Joern Konopka

            Well one could also propose an Idea on the Ayatana List for that matter.

            Best Idea would be to put some more thought into it, figure out usage pits somebody might run into, make a little background work on the possibility of implementation, add some simple mockups if neccessary and push everything into the Mailing List. That way it might actually get the attention it deserves. Since it’s not specifically an Ubuntu Feature it can be proposed on the Gnome-Shell List too.

            I was thinking about this Idea for a long time, i just wish i had some more time at hand besides throwing around random commens at OMG! ;)

          • ean5533

            “when they listen it is only to the most popular idea.”

            So they only listen to ideas that a lot of people like? That sounds pretty reasonable to me. What exactly is your point?

            It sounds to me like you’re just bitter because a feature YOU want hasn’t been implemented yet.

    • ean5533

      This would be a good idea to post to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

    • Anonymous

      wasnt this what the old Alsa sound system did ?

      you could only hear one app.

      that could become an option (to only hear the last app you started), but i like @freddi’s idea too, which gives you more control.

      • Carl

        No, you could hear all at once. But they were presented as an aggregate stream of sound- the sound server could not alter (mute, volume change, cray-zay effects) a particular stream. This is why there was a proliferation of volume controls in individual apps, to fill this niche.

        Pulseaudio, on the other hand, can treat different sources of sound separately, and manage that stuff centrally.

  • Anonymous

    What about a progress bar? That’s the most important thing!

  • Anonymous

    OMG NATTY BECUMS BETTER AND BETTER AND BETTER …..
    JEEZ ….natty will rock hard!!!!!!!!!!!
    great work carnonical!

    • Anonymous

      I know! Imagine if it also included wayland.

      • Anonymous

        ahhh…windows games gona rock in ubuntu (tHrough wine) with ZERO PERFORMANCE LOSS.
        +BOOT UBUNTU IN LESS THEN 5 SECONDS!!!

        • Anonymous

          enough with the all caps! Geez….

        • Anonymous

          Since when did Wayland do that?! O.o

          • Anonymous

            ignore the exaggeration but it will allow for much faster boots and direct access of the video card by apps/libraries (thus, wine)

            Whilst it itself will do nothing … Wayland allows for a much more streamlined and powerful graphical future

    • Anonymous

      Canonical? what about all the non-canonical programmers?

      • Anonymous

        Oh Real sorry….ALL MY FREINDS WHO ARE DIRECTLY INDIRECTLY RELATED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUCH A FANTASTIC SOFTWARE(OS)…THNX A LOT.
        execptional!!!

        • Anonymous

          You, my dear friend, have a faulty keyboard … :P

          ITS NICE THAT YOU APPRECIATE EVERYONE ;)

          • http://jdevelopthis.blogspot.com Jacky Alcine

            Hehehe.

    • http://twitter.com/xsmoli4x Dima Smolich

      beCUMS, JEEZ, rock HARD, omg dude… triple zing…
      and sounds just wrong.

  • http://www.mazyayan.com mazyayan

    it’s a great thing. waiting for another new

  • Anonymous

    Seems good, we just need a quick way to switch between speakers and headset, and the menu will be perfect!

    • Anonymous

      This!

      an option to show certain sound devices and a way to switch between them would be awesome!

  • https://launchpad.net/~brettcornwall Chauncellor

    Hm, interesting dilemma. Most computers will have that playlist menu open on the left of the sound menu because it is located to the very right of the screen. That’s very unfortunate.

  • https://launchpad.net/~brettcornwall Chauncellor

    Hm, interesting dilemma. Most computers will have that playlist menu open on the left of the sound menu because it is located to the very right of the screen. That’s very unfortunate.

    • http://jdevelopthis.blogspot.com Jacky Alcine

      Not for me, my indicators are to the left most of the time.

  • http://www.BaloneyGeek.com Boudhayan Gupta

    I want that scrubber back now, pliss.

  • Anonymous

    it looks promissing. I would like to see a better layout. Pull out menus are hard to use. A simple expantion tab at the bottom the sound menu would work better.

    I haven’t had much use for the sound menu. I have touch control keys on my laptop for that. much faster.

    Before that I would assign empty f# keys to do the same. we will have to what happens with unity.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LOR655GR4ZFHCMSV7FW5ROPSAA Cliff W

      Pullout menus do suck, but long menus suck too, especially on smaller screens. I’ve seen menus scroll right off the bottom of my 13.3″ screen. Given the amount of stuff being stuffed into this “menu”, there’s little doubt it’s going to reach the bottom of screens real quick.

      Unless of course they start expanding it horizontally, but then at some point we’ll just have to admit that it’s a full-blown window, give it a frame and detach it from the panel.

      • Anonymous

        Well better than pullout menus!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QBIM76MFEUVCTPK63SGUGCJK7Q kallos

    I would be much more happy if everything would work with the sound out of the box like: SPDIF, Skype etc etc…
    Canonical implementing a lot of feature but the basic things are not working, or it works just with hacking the things (for this you have to be an advance user or IT guy).
    Why Canonical not creating a very stable system where everything is working including drivers (doesn’t matter if the driver is coming from the hw manufacturer or from Canonical or from third party), and after than you can implement special features.
    In my opinion this is one of the reason why in general the linux based desktop OSes are not popular.
    You have a lot of possibility, you can do almost everything with your OS bu everything is buggy.
    And anyway the 99% of the users doesnt want to hack the OS, they want to use,
    Just take look to Android (I know it is for mobile, but the situation was the same. Symbian was holding 90% of the mobile OS market, and now it is just 31%, and Android 26% ) but if you make a stable and good quality system then later or soon it will spread out.
    But simply, the Linux OSs for desktop is not a good quality, it is buggy, the basic functions are not working well, many many hw islacking with drivers etc etc.
    Many people are saying that not the distromakers are responsible that the hw suppliers not producing linux driver.
    I say no, indeed the distromakers are responsible!
    Why?
    Because if they would have a strategy, if they would have the idea to which marked they want to address the OS they could choose the right HW (just a few) and working together wit the HW manufacturer to prepare the right driver.
    Im sure after this much more people would buy linux Os based Hw because everything would work fine.
    So Linux would get bigger market share, the distromakers would have more money and they could extend the cooperation with more HW manufacturer.
    But like this will never work, simply no strategy behind, just working fro nothing.

    Joe

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LOR655GR4ZFHCMSV7FW5ROPSAA Cliff W

      1. Software doesn’t write itself. It takes time.
      2. Drivers rarely come from 3rd parties, but when they do, they are typically included or made easily installable, so I fail to see your point.
      3. Android works on a very small number of platforms with a very small number of features and applications. Comparing it to a desktop OS is like comparing a skateboard to a SUV.
      4. Everything you say about Linux is also true of Windows, so it seems apparent this is not the primary reason Linux doesn’t have more market share.

      Plus, trying to imply that somehow Android gets it right where Ubuntu doesn’t is just… gross. I have an Android phone and it’s almost convinced me to go back to a good old flip phone with real buttons. It has some very useful features, but from a usability perspective. Bleh. Get real.

  • Heiner Valverde González

    Anyone knows something about the sound contest for new sounds in Ubuntu? I think that contest was held on the last year but I don’t know what happened to it

  • Anonymous

    Thank you Natty! I cannot wait for Natty, Lucid is great, Mavrick is basically no different but Natty will be a HUGE step!

  • http://k-tec.blogspot.com/ Kleverson

    OFF: Only now I saw that the second image was playing Zebrahead, I used to listen to Zebrahead, but, due to lack of available free space, I had to get rid of them.

    I hope they also change plans to implement the windicators about time for Natty.

  • http://half-left.deviantart.com/ Sean

    I’ve got to say I really don’t like the idea of trailing menus with endless playlist options, it still looks like stuff of the 90s.

    One thing that could be done is, monochrome icons with small buttons along the bottom with tooltips. That screenshot goes against Unity’s design in the fact that is supposed to optimised screenspace. Trailing menus like that don’t save space.

  • http://twitter.com/Afrodiseum N.C. Weber

    Although I only ever use one playlist (Christmas music), this looks like quite the handy feature.

  • http://twitter.com/KyleClarkeNZ Kyle Clarke
 
News