unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen <mikkel.kamstrup@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2011-04-06 at 01:25 -0400, Melvin Garcia wrote:
> Hi guys/gals. My name is Melvin Garcia, and I'm new to the list.
> 
> I was comparing Mac's Quartz and Windows' Aero animations to Ubuntu's
> default animation settings and noticed a few things. First of all
> Ubuntu's animations are too fast, to the point of being almost
> invisible and in some cases totally invisible. 
> 
> Quartz and Aero both feature elegant, smooth animations. They catch
> the eye in a pleasant way, but are unobtrusive at the same time. I
> believe the current Unity experience, which is very elegant could be
> enhanced by slower, smoother animations. Glide 2 is not meant for
> "open animation", the window doesn't fade in, it just appears and
> animates very quickly. Glide 1, fade or zoom are better suited for
> this event. These animations feature a nice "fade in" effect enhancing
> the experience.
> 
> "Close animation" should have animations which feature "fade out",
> Glide 2, fade and zoom all work well here. 
> 
> I know having faster animations can make the system feel faster, but
> what's the point in having animations when the user can't appreciate
> them? Windows has smooth open, close and minimize animations and yet,
> the system feels fast. Desktop animations shouldn't be too slow nor
> too fast, they have to walk right in between.

Interesting. I didn't even know we had window animations; I don't see
any.

Or actually now that you point it out - if I focus very hard I think I
can see the fade in when mapping them. But I may be imagining that.

This could just be an effect of frame dropping (I have i945 which is
renowned for spectacularly bad performance :-)). But still; this used to
work with the 0.8 series of Compiz. I guess we need some graphics
experts to weigh in.

Cheers,
Mikkel