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I think, bizarrely, the control pattern for mute "flows" the opposite way to the control for pause/play. If there's a play icon, and you click it, you expect it
by snet0 3y ago
I think, bizarrely, the control pattern for mute "flows" the opposite way to the control for pause/play. If there's a play icon, and you click it, you expect it to play the video. If there's a pause button, you expect it to pause the video. Going against this pattern, if I see a speaker icon, and I click it, I expect it to transition to a crossed-speaker, and mute the video, and vise versa. That is: the current button state in play/pause reflects the action of the button, while the current button state in volume reflects the state of the button.
I think these conventions are easily solved for video, anyway, because it's obvious when the video is muted or not (hopefully).
- onionisafruit 3y ago> it's obvious when the video is muted or not (hopefully). It isn’t always obvious to me. Sometimes I can’t tell if a video player is muted vs the system volume being low. There’s also the situation where a video is silent and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be hearing anything.
- skydhash 3y agoI think these conventions come from actual players like VHS and walkmans. The play, pause, stop,… where actual buttons and mute was an icon on the status display. Buttons are actions while icons are state. The rare case where there was a mute button, it was toggleable (or have a led on it) and these always reflect the state.
- dylan604 3y agomy memory of a Walkman had a wheel for volume but a mute button was not something I'm familiar on this device. see this image for reference: https://vintomatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Vintomatic_Walkman_3451.jpg https://vintomatic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Vintomatic...
- fireflash38 3y agoThey frequently had a "click" at the end of the volume wheel that would fully mute.
- dylan604 3y agoIn my experience, that click also acted as power off.