Bug 98880

Summary: Wrong GUI control used for sink selector (Button, should be combobox)
Product: PulseAudio Reporter: trondsg+bugzilla+freedesktop
Component: pavucontrolAssignee: pulseaudio-bugs
Status: RESOLVED MOVED QA Contact: pulseaudio-bugs
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium CC: lennart
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description trondsg+bugzilla+freedesktop 2016-11-27 21:07:12 UTC 
The buttons used to select the sinks for playback streams should be non-editable comboboxes (like the port selection on output devices), not buttons.

Look at the description:
GtkComboBox — A widget used to choose from a list of items.

This is precisely the functionality of this button.

The advantages of using a combobox are:
1. Discoverability.
At first I did not understand the purpose of this button, so I didn't click on it. I could not understand by looking at it, that it represented a list of sinks. I would have discovered this sooner if a widget that semantically represent a list of choices was used.

2. Usability.
A combobox offer increased usability. The user can change between items with the scroll wheel over the box, without opening it. Keyboard navigation is better. The current menu opens, on spacebar press, where the mouse cursor is, which is undesireable when using keyboard navigation. These nuances are handled automatically when using the correct control.
Comment 1 Tanu Kaskinen 2016-11-27 21:23:17 UTC 
Thanks for taking the time to report the bug. This issue has been reported already: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98792

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 98792 ***
Comment 2 trondsg+bugzilla+freedesktop 2016-11-29 19:38:44 UTC 
No, that's not the same bug. I'm talking about the sink button in the playback tab ("Built-in analog stereo"). The other bug is about the fallback device button in the output devices tab (green checkmark).
Comment 3 Tanu Kaskinen 2016-11-29 19:58:36 UTC 
Oh, very sloppy reading on my part.
Comment 4 GitLab Migration User 2018-07-30 09:29:04 UTC 
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/issues/25.

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