185905 - Need better sound for typeaheadfind

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect, P4)

Description

[Aaron Leventhal]

The file notfound.wav which is currently used for the typeaheadfind sound, when
the user types something which isn't found, is terrible. I've heard that it
sounds like a bodily function. It also has static sounds when played on a mac.

We need a better sound.

This seems like a great thing for an outside volunteer to contribute.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 185907 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

this might be a silly thing to ask, but why follow what mail notification does
and use the system beep by default? (perhaps provide options to change it, if it
doesn't clutter whatever ui we end up designing.)

on mac, the user can configure the system beep from a variety of choices. is
this also possible on win32, or even linux? if yes --esp for win32-- then i
would prefer to use the system beep. if the user doesn't like the system beep,
then s/he could change it via the appropriate OS control panel (where applicable).

Comment 3

[Aaron Leventhal]

Sarah, I thought about that, but I want this to work well out of the box.

Comment 4

[Damian Yerrick]

Attachment: my first entry: square wave that sweeps down and up

Comment 5

[Damian Yerrick]

Attachment: (2 of 3) bzz-tock

Comment 6

[Damian Yerrick]

Attachment: (3 of 3) sweeping resonant filter going upward

Here are three possibilities; take your pick.

Comment 7

[Damian Yerrick]

sairuh: On Mac OS 8.1 (yes, it's been a long time since I last used a Mac),
the user can configure one system alert sound in the systemwide Sound
control panel.  Is this still true in Mac OS X?

On Windows and Linux, the desktop environment typically presents a "Sounds"
control panel to choose different alert sounds for different notification
events described in the system's configuration files.  However, the user
may not be running with a well-known desktop environment (i.e. not gnome,
gnustep, or kde), so we may have to fall back to our own sound on Linux.

Also remember that the user may be hard of hearing or have turned the
speakers' volume down.  For accessibility's sake, please provide a
visible preference to allow for using a flash instead of a sound.

Comment 8

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

> Is this still true in Mac OS X?

yep, via the Sound system preference.

having a screenflash would be good. on mac (current and old OS's), you can
enable this via the Universal Access sys pref (Hearing panel). however, wrt to
typeahead find, i don't know if it could be implemented across platforms (as an
additional option). again, maybe win32 and linux OS's provide a screenflash
option to the system beep; not sure.

also, the statusbar will display descriptive text for TAF feedback.

Comment 9

[Damian Yerrick]

OK, so the Mac OS X "Sound" control panel still lets the user choose a sound
to be played for SysBeep().  But does it let the user choose different sounds
for different events, such as "ding" for default beep (on Windows, mainly
clicking outside of a modal dialog or alert), "chord" for the appearance of an
alert box, "you've got mail" for new mail, "door open" for buddy log on, etc?

Windows 2000 has an option for system-wide flash on notification
(Control Panel > Accessibility Options); it can flash the titlebar, the
toolbar, or the whole screen whenever a program plays a notification sound.

Comment 10

[Ken Walker]

My two cents: many OS's handle accessiblity through the system sounds panel,
such as the Win2K "flash" feature mentioned above.  To go out of your way to
create a sound, and then to build accessibility features on top of that seems
like it hurts production more than helps it.  The Moz community (at least a few
of them) would seem to agree--let the OS handle the beep:
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2764

Comment 11

[Brander Roullett]

Attachment: Short Synth buzz with fade out

For the Type Ahead find...

Comment 12

[Jason Airlie]

Attachment: Subtle bass

Comment 13

[Aaron J B Rowe]

Attachment: less annoying woop sound

Comment 14

[Nareg Apelian]

Attachment: a cute little di-dong!

a cute little di-dong. goes down in scale to show "ending". If the file is too
big i might be able to trim it some more. i encoded it at 22hz, 16bit.
(in case the attachment doesnt work.. it's also here:
http://www.deadsquid.com/~priior/sounds/phoenixbeep.wav )

Comment 15

[j13moh]

Attachment: Clicky sort of metallic sound

Here is my suggestion for the type ahead find sound.

taf-mclick-16b-16k-mono.wav
16 bit sample
16 KHz sampling rate
Mono

I made this in noteworthy composer, processed it a bit in Audacity and Nero
Wave Editor.  It is a sort of a click with an african drum and a xylophone
mixed in.  A few subtle grace notes give it a bit of a kick.  Happy listening
everyone!

Comment 16

[Gashu]

Attachment: electric guitar sound

IMO, Moz should sound like more rock.

Comment 17

[Greg Campbell]

Attachment: just the "dong" from "di-dong"

Comment 18

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

side note: i've filed bug 193923 to just use the win32 system beep. ("simple is
good.")

Comment 19

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

I do not know which bug implemented but current Moziila(at least 1.7 RC1) has
ability to cutomize typeaheadfind sound.

(1) user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.soundURL", "");
    Typeaheadfind sound is disabled. 
(2) user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.soundURL", "beep");
    System sound for "Beep" is used.
(3) user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.soundURL", "default");
    "chrome://global/content/notfound.wav" is used.
(4) user_pref("accessibility.typeaheadfind.soundURL",
"file://d|/my-lib/mysound.wav");
    "file://d|/my-lib/my-sound.wav" (D:\my-lib\my-sound.wav) is used.

See next sources for detail.
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/typeaheadfind/src/nsTypeAheadFind.cpp#1059
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/extensions/typeaheadfind/src/nsTypeAheadFind.h#72

Comment 20

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Attachment: Resampling of the bass

596 bytes as opposed to the current notfound.wav which is over 1K
11025HZ

This will decrease the browser download size (not significantly).

Aaron: Do you have the ability to check this in, or does it need to be given to
someone to superreview?

The file's location is extensions/typeaheadfind/resources/content/notfound.wav

Comment 21

[Aaron Leventhal]

Check with Blake Ross -- he's in charge of FastFind on Firefox, which is where
this will matter most. If they take the new .wav file I don't see a problem with
using it on the classic seamonkey suite as well. However, I want the Firefox
guys to deal with it since it's more of a theming/feel issue and they're the
ones have have the nice vision there.

(In reply to comment #20)
> Created an attachment (id=166940)
> Resampling of the bass
> 
> 
> 596 bytes as opposed to the current notfound.wav which is over 1K
> 11025HZ
> 
> This will decrease the browser download size (not significantly).
> 
> Aaron: Do you have the ability to check this in, or does it need to be given to
> someone to superreview?
> 
> The file's location is extensions/typeaheadfind/resources/content/notfound.wav

Comment 22

[Blake Ross]

I talked to Asa about this and he thinks the proposed sound is a bit too
electronic. He's got an ear for this sort of thing, so I'm going to trust his
judgment.

He actually thinks we should probably just go with the system beep as Sarah
suggested, though I'm less convinced that that won't be annoying.

In any case, the current sound isn't that bad...

Comment 23

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 285266 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[Gary van der Merwe]

If we do use a system sound on windows you should use "Critical Stop"

We should also consider using "Start Navigation" for when a you click on a link
and "Blocked Pop-up Window" for guess when (only there in XPsp2).

Comment 25

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

IMO Firefox sounds should default to the ones defined in the system's settings
(Windows, MacOS, etc) but should be themeable as well. If you can change colors
and shapes, why not sounds?

Comment 26

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

*** Bug 304658 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 27

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 315354, "Audible find phrase not found beep can not be disabled, not tied to windows audio scheme".

Comment 28

[z.justin]

*** Bug 315354 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 29

[Mark Clements]

In my opinion, none of the sounds supplied here are suitable for a find ahead warning.  Have you tried testing them in real usage?  The problem is that you will normally go several characters into an incorrect word before you react to the stop, causing the sound to be triggered many times in quick succession.  The submitted sounds are all too long (will interrupt themselves and maybe create clicking) and/or too loud and intrusive.

The ideal sound would be something very short and fairly quiet/gentle.  People don't need to be startled out of their seats when they type a 'wrong' character!

That said, my favoured solution is one suggested at http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2764 by astrosmash:
> I've always preferred the way Borland C++ Builder/Delphi/Kylix 
> does incremental searching, because it simply ignores unfound 
> characters -- I can mash out "mozoibllla", and it will match 
> "mozilla" (unless it finds another word that starts with "mozoib").
> I find that really useful, siince I'm kind of a slloppy ttyperist.
> Mozilla, MSVC, and XEmacs would beep, stop at "mozo", and force 
> the user to hit backspace one or more times before allowing the 
> search to continue - not very ideal.

This solution removes the need for a sound altogether. If this method is used, the ignored characters should not be removed from the string, but they will need to be coloured differently (e.g. greyed out) to show that they were not included in the search.  

The second best alternative (imho) is to use one of the OS-defined sounds.  

If neither of these happen and Mozilla continues using it's own sound for this, it should still add itself to the Sounds Control Panel in Windows.  There is nothing more annoying than a program adding a sound, and then having to wade through various option menus (or about:config!!) to figure out how to turn it off, when the OS provides a standard mechanism for doing this. For details, see http://www.codeproject.com/audio/soundalerts.asp.

Comment 30

[anhfhsk]

Version 1.5.0.7.
High priority.
Windows XP.
This highly annoying sound is STILL there... It's amazing that a horrible bug like this can be left untouched for FOUR YEARS (2002-12-17). It MUST be given much higher, or by now, extreme priority.

That BRRRUURRRRPPP sound at max volume is so extremely annoying that it makes it totally impossible to search webpages with firefox. Either copy/paste all text into notepad and search there, or use IE instead. Firefox jast CAN'T be used because of that sound. It cripples firefox so totally.

It MUST be possible to switch this sound OFF, permanently and forever. How hard can it be? Just remove the sound function and this bug is solved. There shouldn't be any sound at all, just total and complete silence. Why not instead flash the search-box color 1-2 times or something like that and (at most) display a discrete "not found" label next to it. No sounds!

Comment 31

[Damian Yerrick]

At least Firefox 2.0 RC series on Windows uses the system "ding" sound.

Comment 32

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 3 duplicates.
:enndeakin, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 33

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.