Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

uxdesign.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 490 posts

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#301

Post by teekert »

stefan_ wrote: post #36

I think the worst UI is simply the Teams one, because it presents as an app volume control but then simply controls the global device volume . Fuck off, you are not the only app running. But that comes second to the microphone gain control, which Teams similarly exerts unilateral control over - only this time through an automated algorithm that for some microphone types just ends up muting them entirely. It's wild, y…

Yeah, also, sometimes my volume buttons are not controlling my headphone, the headphone that I'm using and is the only thing producing sound at that time. It takes some time but you'll learn that you need to set the sound output differently in the Windows taskbar itself. And then later of course, you need to set it back because you don't want all sound to go through the headset you just wear while in a meeting and put down as soon as you end a call...

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#302

Post by faebi »

cygned wrote: post #160
mortenjorck wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams’ notifications on Mac are an ongoing debacle. Because they are Microsoft’s own implementation, rather than using the system API, not only do they not respect DND, they also helpfully get lost behind other notifications that come in from properly designed applications. According to the Microsoft admin updates I’m subscribed to, native notifications on Mac have been in a beta channel for months, with a full rollo…

They also get lost when you're in fullscreen. If I wouldn't get them on my watch, I'd basically be unreachable on Teams.

Exactly. I have one screen and I am nearly always working in full screen. My mac is often muted at the same time. Like that I am able to miss many calls because MS Teams shows the notifications on a space which I am not using. This would be no issue if they used system notifications.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#303

Post by nothis »

stefan_ wrote: post #36

I think the worst UI is simply the Teams one, because it presents as an app volume control but then simply controls the global device volume . Fuck off, you are not the only app running. But that comes second to the microphone gain control, which Teams similarly exerts unilateral control over - only this time through an automated algorithm that for some microphone types just ends up muting them entirely. It's wild, y…

Microsoft‘s UX incompetence to market dominance ratio continues to baffle me. I’ve pretty much settled on blaming this on MS winning some race to first OS/Office software useable enough for mass adoption and just forcing all the rest since. If you think of productivity hours destroyed because of Excel quirks and Windows rebooting at the worst possible time, this is maybe the most damage a monopoly has ever done to the economy. But the people who had the power to stop this probably use Word and own Microsoft stock. We’re stuck.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#304

Post by PeterisP »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #13
rectang wrote: post #6

Nearly all volume controls suck because by and large the software world is ignorant of the fact that loudness scales logarithmically. 99.9% of volume controls scale the output linearly.

It’s weird how I nominally know this but never really thought about the implications... How does the hardware world do it? I’d expect the normal way to make a volume control would be to have an adjustable-gain amplifier using the standard opamp circuit somewhere, but those aren’t logarithmic in any resistance you could wire to a knob, are they? (Yes, I am deeply ignorant about electronics.)

It's exactly as you sugggest/doubt - in audio hardware you use potentiometers (the thing under the knob that has different resistance depending on the rotation) that are designed to have logarithmic scale.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#305

Post by MrOxiMoron »

ajklsdhfniuwehf wrote: post #130

Those are still all better than mobile phones that have a dozen "volumes" and when you press the volume up when a video is just starting you might get lucky and lower the media volume, or you might have missed it for one microsecond and now you are stuck on ring or alarm or whatever volume while the video plays.

oxygenOs now by default always does media volume, you have to switch for ring tone volume. best change ever

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#306

Post by pbhjpbhj »

deergomoo wrote: post #282
mianos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is the reference for bad UI. Paste a code block. Select a word in the code block. Copy and you get the whole block copied not the selected word. I could write a page of the issues like this. Maybe it would not be so bad if you only used Teams but when you use slack at the same time it is like someone is wacking you in the back of the head every few minutes.

We've been using Teams since the pandemic started and we switched to WFH. It started off awful, and in that time, it hasn't got better in any material way. Interactions still feel like your mouse pointer is moving through molasses. Notifications are misbehaved trash. Video calls make your CPU beg for mercy (useful if you want to fry eggs on your laptop though). Switching between multiple organisations is still misera…

>It started off awful, and in that time, it hasn't got better in any material way.//

That's not my experience at all. It's not great, but it has improved a lot.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-new-in-mic...

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#307

Post by tokamak-teapot »

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #271
koyote wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paste a code block. Select a word in the code block. Copy and you get the whole block copied not the selected word. I feel like this used to work properly until a month or so ago. The worst bug I've seen, and this is also something that only started happening in the last several months, is select messages simply not appearing! So basically I open my computer in the morning and look at Teams and it'll have messages…

Outlook also has had this problem of emails just not showing up. Sometimes it takes a whole day for an email to arrive. Amazingly low quality for such a wide used product. MS in particular has the habit of actually introducing small bugs like this regularly through their usual updates. It's infuriating. One day something works the next it just doesn't. I know people who never update their machine because of this. Can…

I spend too much time sitting waiting for people to join meetings that have been cancelled or moved - and Outlook / Teams don't know yet. I'm connected - I know this because I'm sitting there 'in' the meeting. I'm receiving emails. I'm talking to people on Teams... Argh.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#308

Post by WalterGR »

roland35 wrote: post #30

The subreddit /r/Programmerhumor sometimes had a whole bunch of memes around volume controls, but there are often times other funny themes that can go on for weeks... - bad phone number inputs - how large node packages can get - software interview process - backend vs front end engineers And my favorite meme was when they parodied the Hawaii missile alarm back a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor…

> bad phone number inputs

That's exactly what this post reminded me of.

The bad phone number input 'prompt' is, I'd say, classic at this point. I don't know which URL started it all, but here are a couple:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/651hfm/i_s...

https://imgur.com/a/4f3XB

Bonus HN posts:

Show HN: I've made a rotary dial number input, because why not? (2019) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21234891) 190 points 86 comments

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11321236) 236 points 122 comments

Google's phone number handling library (2014) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8574080) 284 points 42 comments

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#309

Post by christophilus »

rectang wrote: post #6

Nearly all volume controls suck because by and large the software world is ignorant of the fact that loudness scales logarithmically. 99.9% of volume controls scale the output linearly.

Same for brightness control, at least on my Linux computers. I vaguely remember it feeling right when I used a Mac.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#310

Post by prox »

jiggawatts wrote: post #24
rectang wrote: post #6

Nearly all volume controls suck because by and large the software world is ignorant of the fact that loudness scales logarithmically. 99.9% of volume controls scale the output linearly.

This is in the same category of error as most programmers thinking that sRGB uses a linear light model. They try to do arithmetic like blending or blurring on the raw image data this inevitably does the wrong thing. Similarly, most non-AAA game engines ignore the sRGB tone curve and treat all inputs and outputs as if they were linear, which results in unexpected brightness shifts in textures. Up until very recently,…

I think Elite Dangerous Odyssey recently had this problem. Any ice planet at release was literally blowing out the sun in terms of brightness a thousand fold or so it seemed.
Post reply on HN