663935 - 1952 called, it wants its system beeps back (use regular sounds instead)

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect)

Description

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

We use system beeps at least of type-ahead-find, see bug 655703, we need to stop doing that and instead use real regular sounds. The problem with system beeps is that they have completely undefined behavior, on some platforms they are actual mainboard beeps (like in 1952), on some platforms they are regular sounds, on some platforms they do nothing at all. That diversity is found among linux distros alone.

Comment 1

[Mike Gorse]

David Bolter must have been alluding to this in one of his comments to 655703, but, for the typeahead sound, if accessibility.typeaheadfind.soundURL is set to "default", then it plays notfound.wav (included in the Mozilla source tree).  If it is set to "beep", then it invokes a system beep.

It is set to "beep" by default in all.js, and hg blame returns "1".  I think that setting it to "default" would make more sense, particularly where system beeps are unusual these days and so the beep might either not play at all or play at a volume irrespective of the user's normal mixer settings.

Comment 2

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Ahem. In 1952 we used terminal _bells_, not beeps. AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY! :)

Ding.

Comment 3

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Bug 655703 was wontfix'ed on the basis that this was what had to be done instead. But if nobody has time to work on this, then I wouldn't assert that taking my patch in bug 655703, setting the sound preference to false, is better than doing nothing.

Comment 4

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

s / wouldn't / would

Comment 5

[Daniel Santos]

Rise bug report. Rise from your slumber. RISE!!!

Yes, this is annoying as hello and unexpectedly loud.