Completed Proposal: Improvements to Scrubbing - Phase-2

Proposal pages help us get from feature requests into actual plans. This page is a proposal to improve Scrubbing in Audacity.

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The Problem

Scrubbing was introduced in Audacity 2.1.0 but QA and members of the TLC recognize that, while the underling technological implementation is excellent,the user interface could do with some improvement. There are insufficient visual cues to indicate to the user that they are in scrubbing mode (which has led to some users being trapped in Scrubbing mode, not understanding what is going on and worse, having no idea how to escape.

Plus there is no GUI method (button or menu command) to enter scrubbing mode, only a mouse and keyboard gesture which makes it hard to be "discoverable".

Proposed Feature

I am proposing is a two phase approach. Phase-1 is really a bit of a tidy-up with some of James' suggestions - but not changing the UI, so in this phase all Paul's current UI gestures will be preserved this should thus make Phase-1 relatively un-contentious.

The second phase will address the UI and how the user accesses scrubbing, that will be harder.

Phase-1

1.1) Change the green triangle on the cursor, so indicating that it is not recording, nor playing, but some other mode. James +1, Peter +1

1.2) Change the green triangle on the play button to indicate scrubbing-play (in both cases possibly a double headed triangle would work, indicating bi-directional). Combined these give a clue that clicking on transport buttons could help. James +1, Peter +1

1.3) Make ESC take us out of scrubbing. James +1, Peter +1

1.4) Make clicking outside the track take us out of scrubbing. James +1, Peter +1

Phase-1 will not help the user who accidentally strays into scrubbing, but it will give them (and us) a bit of a clue as to what is going on.

P3 Bugs (as part of Phase-1 clean-up)

1.5) http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1053 Status Bar messages incorrect after scrub commences.

1.6) http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=991 Pause button and Pause command are not grayed out as inoperable when in scrub mode

1.7) http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1079 Scrubbing is stopped when a tool that is not Select is chosen

Phase-2

UI/GUI discussion - to be undertaken once Phase-1 is complete.

This will involve a lot more discussion I'm thinking.

2.1) How should the user enter scrubbing mode. Via a GUI?

2.2) Where should the cursor rest after scrubbing is stopped

Developer/QA Backing

Peter: +1 for all the Phase-1 steps

Use Cases

TBP

Details

Explicit in steps 1.1 through 1.7

GUI Examples

Not required.

Previous Feature Requests relating to this proposal

Not applicable.