Maintain Your Sanity with IndieVolume!
Do you ever find yourself wishing you could temporarily mute the audio in a FLA while working on it? It’s easy enough, of course. I’m not sure how it works on a Mac (surely just as easily), but on Windows, you simply mute the volume control in the system tray.
Ah, but there’s the rub! On Windows—XP at least, which is what I’m using—that’s an all-or-nothing “solution.” The trouble is, I like to listen to music while I work, and most of the time that means playing audio files directly on my computer. If my system is muted, it’s muted.
For years, I’ve simply been dealing with this, but I finally had enough. Just last week, I started searching online for ways to selectively mute individual applications on WinXP. For my money, IndieVolume wins, hands down. Not only can I mute Flash—which temporarily silences both my FLAs and SWFs—I can also selectively mute, say, Safari or Firefox, which lets me enjoy the same benefit when testing in a browser.
Even better, I can leave my apps audible, but adjust their volumes individually (panning, too), which means I can keep my Flash content quiet while leaving my audio player and other system alerts/sounds going strong.
If you’re interested, try giving IndieVolume a shot! The developer offers a free trial period, and you even get a discount for endorsing the product on your blog. I’ve been spreading the word anyway, because this app is one of those cases of “it’s the little things that count.” I’m truly a happier coder for the quiet. 
May 10th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Yeah, I never thought I would love that little feature of Windows Vista and Windows 7 until I went back and tried a Windows XP machine for a few weeks. Now having Windows 7 is so refreshing again.
One more thing still bugs me though, sometimes when I am browsing the net, I find that I have 10 or more tabs open at once in a Browser, and suddenly one of them starts playing annoying sounds/music. But which one?! I wish there was an easy way to see where all of the sounds are coming from within a single browser.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Daniel, heh, that’s a good point! Most browsers I can think of have tabs nowadays, which is an improvement, but there’s always room to improve further.