Proton: inconvenient controlling tab sound (mute/playing)
Categories
(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)
Tracking
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People
(Reporter: bugzilla, Unassigned)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0
Steps to reproduce:
Upgraded Firefox to 89.0
Actual results:
New design made it inconvenient to control tab sound.
- Distinguishing playing tab
How it was: there was a "volume" icon on tab
How it became: tab has text label "PLAYING" under the tab title.
Icon is a better way to distinguish playing state. Formerly used icon is widely used recognizable, and clearly determines its meaning. It was easy to use. Through the time, we won't read text label "PLAYING", we will accept it as an icon.
If it is possible to use icon (icon meaning is recognizable), better to use it instead of text label, for faster navigation. Faster navigation -> better UX.
Steps before: 1) find tab containing recognizable icon
Steps now: 1) find tab containing text "Playing" under the tab title
I liked
- Muting/unmuting playing tab
How it was: there was a "volume" icon on tab, you could hover on it and then click to toggle tab sound state
How it became: tab has text label "PLAYING" under the tab title. after you hover on the tab, you have to notice that tab favicon changed to "volume" icon, hover on it (clickable area is about 1/2 cursor, so be accurate).
Steps before: 1) find tab containing recognizable icon 2) hover on icon 3) click on it to toggle tab sound state
Steps now: 1) find tab containing text "Playing" under the tab title 2) hover on it 3) notice that tab favicon changed to the widely recognizable icon "volume" 4) hover on it (clickable area is about 1/2 cursor, so be accurate) 5) click on it
As fas as sound control button (icon "volume") is small, you should make an effort to hover cursor on it.
Summary:
Proton made controlling tab sound inconvenient. Now it is more difficult, and less untuitive.
- It is not intuitive that tab sound control button (volume icon) shows a) only when you hover the tab b) it is located in place of favicon. Double "WAT?".
- Tab sound control button (volume icon) is too small, you should make an effort to position on it. Why having so huge tab, if it's controls are so small?
- Why tab state ("playing") and state control element (small volume icon, that appears when you hover the tab) separated? Text label "playing/mute" does not provide any different information comparing to "volume" icon. But icon is all-in-one: a state indicatior and control element, it is convenient.
Expected results:
- It is easy to distinguish playing tab
- Clickable area of sound control button ("volume icon") is enough to not require additional effort to locate on it (now it is too small)
- Sound control button ("volume icon") is visible if tab playing sound. I can locate control element without hovering the tab.
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Comment 1•3 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 2•3 years ago
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Hello Vladislav and thank you for your contribution!
I can see the inconvenience you are addressing however this is an expected behavior for the browser's mute icon. However the size of the new mute icon is indeed a bit hard to click on it.
Jared what do you think about the mute icons size?
(In reply to Negritas Sergiu from comment #2)
Hello Vladislav and thank you for your contribution!
I can see the inconvenience you are addressing however this is an expected behavior for the browser's mute icon. However the size of the new mute icon is indeed a bit hard to click on it.
Jared what do you think about the mute icons size?
speaking of size, i've created separate bug report, related to this one: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1714012
However, the source of inconvenience is that control element (icon "volume" that toggles mute/unmute state) is separated from the state indicator (text label "playing/muted").
It just breaks established UX habit, and gives nothing in return but irritation of inconvenience. Proton fixed what weren't broken.
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Comment 5•3 years ago
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(In reply to Negritas Sergiu from comment #2)
Jared what do you think about the mute icons size?
I compared Proton and pre-Proton, and the clickable area for both mute icons is 16px by 16px. There was no change in actual clickable size, though the icon graphic appears smaller while there is now a visible background area that shows all of the clickable area.
As Negritas, this is all expected behavior and as such we don't have any plans to make any changes here.
The report is NOT about icon sizes, it is about inconvenience of searching control element, what is:
a) hidden until tab is hovered
b) appears in place of site's favicon
It is NOT invalid, and is NOT resolved.
If one is visually handicapped like myself, this is not only inconvenient, it is visually inaccessible. You are not being conscious of those who are disabled and perhaps some cultural sensitivity training is warranted.
Finding tabs playing sound now requires distinguishing between "Playing" and "Autoplay Blocked".
Previously you could spot the actively playing tabs at a quick glance and the always visible and familiar mute icon made it obvious that you can stop the audio by clicking on the button.
The new method is less intuitive. Now to discover the feature two conditions have to be met:
- You have to first hover over the tab just to reveal the mute/play icon
- then hover over the icon itself to reveal the information that it is actually a clickable button. I do like that the text changes which makes it more obvious that it indeed is a button if you accidentally hover over the icon.
But previously the prominent and easy to understand mute icon very much looking like an actual button made the feature much more discoverable and since it was only there for tabs actively playing audio it was imho not intrusive or confusing enough to get rid of it.
Only while writing this post I realized the new button also works as a "play tab" button for autoplay blocked tabs. The icon didn't look like something clickable, as I (if it existed) never used the "Play tab" button in previous Firefox versions, so I had no association with the icon itself, but more importantly, the small outline around the icon when hovering over it is barely noticeable and if it wasn't for the text change (and me testing things for this post) I wouldn't have realized it's a button.
Compare it to the change when you hover over the close tab button, highlighting the button with a large area, which even goes as far as to expand it's space by hiding more of the text underneath. I don't see why this button shouldn't be highlighted with a large area like that, too.
This update introduced a 2-row text display for multimedia tabs. It might end up looking cluttered, but how about doing the same for the icons, one icon being the favicon and the second one being the start/mute tab button? Then the button would be always visible and more discoverable.
Or changing the "Playing"/"Autoplay Blocked" text into typical multimedia buttons to Play/Pause, Stop and Mute/Unmute when the user hovers over the tab, if there is enough space to display all three. When the buttons are the universally understood multimedia buttons and they are in the "autoplay blocked"/"playing" line the small button size would also be reasonable, since people would understand it visually as a result of the space constraint.
Another problem is that the current favicon changing method to make the button available looks more like a "You are hovering over a multimedia tab" information box rather than a "Click here to do something" since the user already expects the display to change as a result of hovering over the tab and by default the icon doesn't look like a button.
If you want to stick to the current favicon method, then the button-area should be much larger than it currently is for the sake of discoverability.
On a semi-related note:
- I do not know if my suggestion is already in Firefox, since I don't use microphone/webcam in Firefox, but I'd think people using those features would appreciate an always visible indicator in the tab overview through which they could easily identify those tabs, if they are buttons they could enable/disable microphone or webcam.
- When the tab bar is overflown a new button could be to jump directly to the next active multimedia/webcam/microphone tab.
(In reply to hotazguy from comment #7)
If one is visually handicapped like myself, this is not only inconvenient, it is visually inaccessible. You are not being conscious of those who are disabled and perhaps some cultural sensitivity training is warranted.
Comments like that show your own insensitivity towards handicapped people and make it unlikely that anyone is going to consider taking your comments serious. I don't know if you are trying to be funny or trying to force a change you'd like to see, but I think you are failing at both. If you'd be genuinely handicapped you'd have described how "it is visually inaccessible."
Excuse my comment as I was a bit perturbed over the dismissive reply given to Vladislav. I was not trying to be funny, and I can show the Social Security documents attesting to my legal blindness. The "playing" text is very visually inaccessible to someone like myself. Before, the mute button was quite distinguishable and prominent, making it easy to use. In this design scheme, you don't even see the mute button until you hover over the tab that is playing., making it difficult to quickly scan the tabs and mute it. I do apologize for my bitter response. I am often faced with design features that makes life difficult for me, e.g. white text on a light blue background.
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Comment 10•3 years ago
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I found it difficult to read/see the Mute button in the tab. It was not really visible to me even if I am not a low vision user. Please improve this experience! I found it really inconvenient and confusing that clicking the tab shut off the sound and when the sound shut off, it took me several seconds to figure out why the sound suddenly went off.
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