the play/pause button had no fixed width, so swapping the single-character play glyph for the two-character pause glyph (with the fonts normal spacing between them) visibly widened the button. now a fixed 2.4ch width with tightened tracking on the pause state.\n\nmute only ever toggled — there was no way to set a level. added a small click/drag bar next to it (same interaction as the scrub bar), synced with the video elements own volume/muted state via the volumechange event so it stays correct regardless of how its changed.
scrub fill/time were driven off timeupdate, which browsers fire irregularly (a handful of times a second) — visible as the bar stepping instead of gliding. now driven by requestAnimationFrame while playing (display refresh rate), with a direct sync on pause/seeked so it still tracks immediately when not running.\n\npreload=none meant zero data was fetched until the play button was pressed, causing a visible stall right at playback start. preload=metadata lets the browser prime the connection and read the moov atom ahead of time without fetching the full video for visitors who never press play.
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