A lot of audio players like to combine Play and Pause buttons. If a song is playing, pressing the Play button again pauses the track; if a song is paused, pressing the Play button resumes playing. It makes sense and reduces the number of buttons, right?<\/p>\n
Winamp does not take this approach, and I commend its developers for it.<\/p>\n
On the surface, combining these two buttons seems like a great idea. However, let’s suppose you want to replay the current track. Maybe you’re not paying attention and suddenly realize that the song you’re listening to is a favorite that you haven’t heard in a while, or maybe you’re just in the mood to listen to a particular song over and over.<\/p>\n
In Winamp’s separate button design, if a song is playing, pressing the Play button again re-plays the current track. In the combined button design, pressing the Previous Track button typically returns to the track’s beginning. Seems like a sound design so far.<\/p>\n
Now let’s suppose you want to skip to the previous track. In the separate button design, the Previous Track button always<\/em> selects the previous track. In the combined button design, however, the Previous Track button only sometimes<\/em> selects the previous track, since it’s also used to restart the current<\/em> track. Typically the button skips to the previous track only if it’s already at the beginning to another track—the “beginning” defined as some arbitrary number of seconds.<\/p>\n Thus, overloading the Play button with pausing functions means we need to overload the Previous Track button too.<\/strong> Furthermore, overloading the Previous Track button requires introducing either time-dependent behavior or button modality. That’s a significant increase in interface complexity<\/strong> to save a single button. (The Previous Track and Next Track buttons typically have another<\/em> behavior too; they seek within tracks when the buttons are held down.)<\/p>\n Increasing interface complexity increases error rates.<\/strong> My car stereo uses the combined button approach, and it makes it difficult for me to navigate backwards through CD tracks when I want to find a particular track. I need to listen for a few seconds to determine which track is which, and depending on how long I wait to listen, I sometimes need to press the Previous Track button once and sometimes twice. This is even more problematic when I’m driving and not looking at the track number.<\/p>\n Makers of software-based audio players have nothing to lose by providing separate buttons; virtual buttons have no monetary cost. Makers of car stereos should provide separate buttons because it’s a little safer.<\/p>\n (Although I prefer separate buttons, if space is at a premium, a respectable compromise might be to combine the Pause and Stop buttons instead. If pressed briefly, pause; if held down, stop. If the Stop button has been done away with too, then perhaps holding down the Play button can replay the current track.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lot of audio players like to combine Play and Pause buttons. If a song is playing, pressing the Play button again pauses the track; if a song is paused, pressing the Play button resumes playing. It makes sense and reduces the number of buttons, right? Winamp does not take this approach, and I commend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantsraves","category-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}