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no controls on increase/decrese the volume

Open albertnetymk opened this issue 3 years ago • 4 comments

In the demo (https://shikwasa.js.org/), I don't see a way to increase/decrease the volume. The only thing I can do is to mute/unmute. I wonder if this feature (adjusting volume) is not supported by the player, or it's just that the demo didn't cover it.

PS: This player is quite sleek and handy for podcast. Well done.

albertnetymk avatar Oct 24 '20 19:10 albertnetymk

The player does not support volume control in UI, but you can always access it via player.audio.volume as player.audio is a native HTMLAudioElement instance. This is intended as a somewhat biased feature.

To further explain, users already have system sound controls UI at their disposal in the OS (both mobile and desktop). Most modern devices also have physical buttons (keyboard control, smartphone volume keys, etc.). Both ways are handier to adjust the volume if anyone finds it too high/low, so a volume tuning feature looks rather redundant. In some cases, users might need to temporarily disable a single sound output quickly, so the mute feature is still useful.

In reply to this thread, I noticed that Chrome's web player doesn't provide volume control, either. So I guess I'm not alone in this thought? I'm open to discussions tho :)

jessuni avatar Nov 04 '20 08:11 jessuni

To further explain, users already have system sound controls UI at their disposal in the OS (both mobile and desktop). Most modern devices also have physical buttons (keyboard control, smartphone volume keys, etc.). Both ways are handier to adjust the volume if anyone finds it too high/low,

I totally agree that they are handier.

so a volume tuning feature looks rather redundant.

Well, my use case is that I have two apps emitting sound, but their volume level differs significantly. I can surely use the system-level volume control, but that means whenever I switch from one to the other, I need to adjust the volume, which is undesirable, especially if the switching happens often.

In reply to this thread, I noticed that Chrome's web player doesn't provide volume control, either.

I use chromium 86, and it does show a volume bar when playing local mp3 files. Some random material I encountered, while searching on this topic: https://support.google.com/chrome/forum/AAAAP1KN0B02lN8hckg9cg/?hl=en&gpf=%23!msg%2Fchrome%2F2lN8hckg9cg%2FH8F4VrbYBQAJ&msgid=H8F4VrbYBQAJ It seems that many people do have strong opinions on the volume slider.

albertnetymk avatar Nov 04 '20 10:11 albertnetymk

I meant the mini player that appears in the menu bar when any tab plays sound, but I got your point.

There's not much discussion on this "whether a volume control is still essential to a web player" matter, but I found some major platforms that share the same notion as mine, including SoundCloud, NPR, Bandcamp and Wix. Some people did find them annoying because of it, even though they might be the minority – since people who almost don't use the slider don't care and won't complain at all. But on a second thought, as a library and not a platform, it'd be better that Shikwasa takes a more neutral stand and take most of the scenarios into consideration.

For future updates I'm thinking of making the UI more customizable, volume control can be part of it.

Thanks for your suggestion. It encourages me to think thoroughly about this matter.

jessuni avatar Nov 05 '20 03:11 jessuni

Thank you for being so open-minded.

albertnetymk avatar Nov 05 '20 10:11 albertnetymk