Rhythmbox's volume control requires you to click it to bring up the slider

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
 * How do you want to change the slider when it's not displayed

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

IS THIS REPRODUCIBLE?

Yes.

HOW TO REPRODUCE

While Rhythmbox is in normal (not mini) mode, attempt to change the volume by doing the obvious thing: Clicking on the little volume control icon. Doing so brings up a slider, and you realize that you have to click it again and drag the control in order to actually change the volume (and then you are affected by Bug #160565 at https://bugs.launchpad.net/rhythmbox/+bug/160565 , where the volume control is laggy).

After you're done, notice that there is a separate slider control on top of the normal Rhythmbox interface. It doesn't look like it belongs there, but there's no obvious way to get it to go away. Eventually you just click someplace and it disappears. Either that or you decide to ignore it and just let it stay there, and then the next time you try to click anywhere on the screen (even outside the Rhythmbox window) the control disappears, and that's all that happens as a result of your click.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR

Whatever graphics are used to represent the slider, it should be an integral part of the Rhythmbox controls, instead of a separate floating element that hovers over the Rhythmbox window and requires extra clicks to summon and dismiss.

OBSERVATION

This bug affects Banshee as well.

EXTRAPOLATION

If there are no other viable options for displaying a volume control, it may be a problem with GTK+, and not with Rhythmbox itself.

The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

The slider should always be visible. At the moment is it only visible by clicking on the volume button. This is especially unusual given the amount of unused "white space" immediately to the left of the volume button.

On Sunday 22,November,2009 07:06 AM, molecule-eye wrote:
> The slider should always be visible. At the moment is it only visible by
> clicking on the volume button. This is especially unusual given the
> amount of unused "white space" immediately to the left of the volume
> button.
>
I'm afraid this is rather standard behaviour for most applications in GNOME
sporting a volume control, Totem included. Frankly speaking, I prefer it this
way, and besides, I can always change the volume by scrolling on the volume
icon. It's a much easier approach than dragging a slider around.

--
Kind regards,
Chow Loong Jin (GPG: 0x8F02A411)
Ubuntu Contributing Developer

>>> I'm afraid this is rather standard behaviour for most applications in GNOME sporting a volume control, Totem included. Frankly speaking, I prefer it this way, and besides, I can always change the volume by scrolling on the volume icon. It's a much easier approach than dragging a slider around. <<<

I agree; now that I know what to look for, I like it better this way.

The problem is that it's not discoverable. I didn't know you could click-and-drag on the volume control until I found out by submitting a bug report; before that, I thought you had to click to reveal it, click to set volume, then click again to hide it. I probably would've gone on believing that, too.

If that's what a majority of users are doing right now, then the default behavior seems broken.

Hmm ... what if we made it so that only clicking-and-dragging worked, but that a tooltip came up saying to click and drag to set volume?

Upstream reports that this is the way GNOME applications work and there is not much that could be done.

According to upstream comments there is nothing that we can do for change this behaviour so for now I will close this report, Thanks in advance.