Clearer hierarchy - Combine the "Output Devices", "Input Devices" and "Configuration" tabs into sub-tabs of a new "Devices" tab
The current UI layout, with its five horizontal tabs ("Playback", "Recording", "Output Devices", "Input Devices" and "Configuration") is problematic for small window widths, particularly for more verbose languages (like French, German, Russian, etc.) beyond English... Also, I've always felt it to be a bit cluttered and visually confusing to have those last three tabs on the same level as the "Playback" and "Recording" application streams. And frankly, the first two labels are ambiguous.
What I would suggest is to:
- regroup the last three tabs under one "Device" tab, and in that tab, near the top of the layout, provide those three types of device panes as a set of "linked" togglebuttons, maybe with a GtkSwitcher.
- ...but if we're doing that, why not go all the way to make things super clear, because the "Playback" and "Recording" labels are still confusion-prone, so I'd suggest turning them into sub-switchers of a new "Applications" (or "Streams", if you prefer) category.
So essentially you'd have a GUI that looks like this:
---------------------------------------------------------
| ( Applications | *Devices* ) (x) |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
| ( Output | Input | Configuration ) |
| |
| |
| |
| contents go here |
| |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
---------------------------------------------------------
| ( *Applications* | Devices ) (x) |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
| ( Playback | Recording ) |
| |
| |
| |
| contents go here |
| |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
...where the *
are just for the sake of illustrating what is the currently selected/toggled-on button in my ASCII mockups (the *
characters wouldn't show up in the GUI for real :)