Comments on: Squib of the day: gentle fade http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2009/03/31/squib-of-the-day-gentle-fade/ "Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios." Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:08:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Calum http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2009/03/31/squib-of-the-day-gentle-fade/comment-page-1/#comment-959 Calum Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:18:49 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/?p=563#comment-959 If there was to be any fading by default, I'd suggest fading out on mouse-out, rather than fading in on mouse-over... you want immediate, snappy feedback when you mouse over something, a ponderous fade-in could make things feel slow and imprecise. (IIRC this is how the tooltips behave on the Mac dock, for example.) If there was to be any fading by default, I’d suggest fading out on mouse-out, rather than fading in on mouse-over… you want immediate, snappy feedback when you mouse over something, a ponderous fade-in could make things feel slow and imprecise.

(IIRC this is how the tooltips behave on the Mac dock, for example.)

]]> By: Screwtape http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2009/03/31/squib-of-the-day-gentle-fade/comment-page-1/#comment-957 Screwtape Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:26:01 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/?p=563#comment-957 You'd want a theme format-change so that the theme could specify the fade delay - some themes might want the change to be instant, some (perhaps more organically styled) themes might want the delay to be long. Some themes that are emulating some specific look might want to copy a specific delay. There should probably be a gconf maximum-fade-length as well - I recall playing with a version of Opera that had a half-second fade-in prelight effect on toolbar buttons, and found it incredibly annoying and frustrating; possibly because the animation kept pulling my attention away from whatever it was I was trying to do. A final thought: Mac OS X is very careful in the use of fading animations in its interface; in particular, menus fade out when you've chosen a menu-item but they do not fade *in* - they just appear instantly. This makes menus feel to use, but still looks good. It might be worth having separate 'prelight fade-in time' and 'prelight fade-out time' settings. You’d want a theme format-change so that the theme could specify the fade delay – some themes might want the change to be instant, some (perhaps more organically styled) themes might want the delay to be long. Some themes that are emulating some specific look might want to copy a specific delay.

There should probably be a gconf maximum-fade-length as well – I recall playing with a version of Opera that had a half-second fade-in prelight effect on toolbar buttons, and found it incredibly annoying and frustrating; possibly because the animation kept pulling my attention away from whatever it was I was trying to do.

A final thought: Mac OS X is very careful in the use of fading animations in its interface; in particular, menus fade out when you’ve chosen a menu-item but they do not fade *in* – they just appear instantly. This makes menus feel to use, but still looks good. It might be worth having separate ‘prelight fade-in time’ and ‘prelight fade-out time’ settings.

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