Feature request #470: REQUEST: "Attenuate" feature

From a user email:

"Just a new feature that I'd love to see...

To have an extra button in the Synergy controls in the task bar that didn't mute the music but dropped it to a secondary volume when engaged...like in a car stereo, the ATT button drops the volume to talking level...and then back to the previous volume.

Thought i'd be nice to have a 'alt' volume control in the pref pane for this feature. This would tell Synergy where to put the volume when engaged...or simply make it drop iTunes to a very low volume...for phone calls, drop in visitors or whatever...when you don't really feel like muting it and killing the vibe;)"

Thanks for submitting the feature request. I agree that it's a neat idea. The most straight-forward way to implement it would be via a hot key rather than a menu bar button (because a new menu bar button would require all the existing button sets to be updated). Playing with iTunes it seems like halving the volume would be a reasonable default; try it yourself: wherever the slider is try moving it half-way towards zero. The attenuation effect seems about right.

So the way I would implement this is as a hot key for toggling the attenuation on and off, defaulting to 50% attenuation, with a setting in the advanced preferences allowing people to change the default attenuation value if they want.

Slating this one for Synergy Advance rather than Synergy because there's more room in both the hot keys and the advanced sections of the preferences (see also bug #294).