ConceptsAssociated.

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Pause emancipaaaaaaa

Use the switchboard to explore the names & icons of the new controls.

play

pause

stop

video

audio

time

concept 30
by Peter Manuel

There is injustice in the classic video control buttons, something needs to be done.

Look at the Pause and Mute buttons. Why does Pause stop the sound while the image stays visible (albeit frozen)? The same for Mute: why does the sound stop while the image remains visible?

We are appalled that this inequality persists in the 21st century and propose that video players let you pause and mute a video in an inclusive way, via a TruePause

and a TrueMute

button:

When you click TruePause the video is paused, time is paused and the audio is paused as well: the sound you heard when you clicked the button is extended as an audible note for as long as the (true)pause lasts.¹
When you click TrueMute, both the audio and the video are stopped, while time moves on.

TruePause and TrueMute have been implemented in the demo video player on the left, together with the restyled Play

, Pause

, Mute

and Stop

buttons (see below). And two additional buttons: Blind

and InversePause

. More about those below.

Play around with them to understand why we need them in our video players. Don't forget to turn on your sound.

Thinking further about the essence of video player controls we can identify three main elements (video | audio | time) and three possible states for each element (playing | paused | stopped). Visually we encode this as follows in the new button designs:

There are 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 combinations of these elements and states. The resulting video control buttons are shown below.

Discover the suggested names of all 27 buttons by playing around with the switchboard on the left.

We encourage developers to implement as many of these buttons as possible, since there is a lot of inequality to be resolved. All buttons can be implemented by anyone free of charge. We do ask however that you clearly mention ConceptsAssociated as the source.

The TruePause project is listed in our clinique.

¹In the demo player we provide on the left this is emulated by playing a pre-chosen note. A proper implementation, of course, needs to freeze the actual sound that is played the moment you press the button.