Pausing the music

[davidemania]

Uhm, I can't find a way to pause a song for a while and then resume it from where it left. If I hit the "stop" button then hitting "play" again the music restarts from the beginning... I am missing something obvious?

thanks
Davide

[ACX]

The Play button is a Play/Pause button, so it switches between the two states.

[davidemania]

IK, now I got it. But (in my opinion) the symbols are reversed... After pushing "play" the button should change to reflect the new function (it is a "pause" button while the music plays), and go back to the play triangle when in stopped or paused state.

Of course it is a matter of personal preferences, but personally I find the actual logic a little confusing. I have to push "play" to pause and "pause" to play. May be it would be useful to listen to what other users have to say... I suspect I am not the only one

[ACX]

Yeah, we discussed it many times before implementing it and also here in the forum. The idea is that the button has to reflect the current state, and not the reverse, so you have the play icon with highlighted background while in play and the pause icon with highlighted background while in pause. I agree on that's a matter of personal taste too.

[Stwert]

I too find it backwards from what I expect. Sometimes (because of slight delays in the response) I click the button three or four times before I get the behaviour I'm wanting .

I understand the logic of reflecting the current state, but to counter that logic: buttons should display what happens when you press them. The stop button shows a stop symbol not because the music is stopped, but because that's what happens when you press it. Same with the library button, same with the next track, previous track. Every other button in the interface displays what will happen when you press it.

Honestly it doesn't bother me overly much (it's not hard to get used to), but from a UX perspective, my feeling is that it should be switched. My two cents.

[davidemania]

Stwert I agree with you. If there will ever be a poll I will vote to switch

[aj78]

I agree. I think the symbol on the button should reflect what will happen if you press the button, not the state of the programme at the current time. This confused me too at first; I figured it out by trial and error, but the current behaviour is suboptimal from the operability point of view.

[littlebone]

I would like to add my vote for the button reflecting what it will do when pressed and not the current state of the playback. I don't need to see the 'PLAY' button to know it is already playing: I can hear it playing. And I don't need to see the 'PAUSE' button to know that it is paused because I don't hear anything.

That said; I now know what to do when I need to pause or play, so this is not a big issue.

[ACX]

Well it seems that we have to consider this option... any other supporter of the "inverse" (or "straight", it depends on how you look at it) mode around?

[davidemania]

I had a quick peek at the players I currently have on the computer and VLC, MPlayerX and QuickTime Player all use the "reversed" standard, not to mention youtube. Generally speaking when it comes to UIs consistency is a key factor, and this is more true nowadays when we have to cope with so many different ones on all our devices.