"Some of this work involves reworking the user
interface for controlling GNOME Sound Preferences, which we are
providing a glimpse of in this article. Among other benefits, there
is finally the ability to adjust the volume level on a
per-application basis.
"While improved volume control is one of the items being worked
on by Red Hat for Fedora 11, the GNOME work was already pulled into
Ubuntu 9.04 and can be found in the Alpha 3 release to come out
later this week. One of the first signs of this new volume control
work is the sound control applet, which has its slider positioned
horizontally now and below that is a mute checkbox along with a
volume control button. When clicking on the volume control button
it will launch the new GNOME Sound Preferences."