unity-design team mailing list archive

[Carl Simpson <cwd.simpson@xxxxxxxxx>]

The grid animations look ever so slightly rubbish, for a number of reasons.

One which is more of a “design decision” is this: because of the way snap
animations start to appear when you're sorta-maybe-nearby to the screen
edge, I seem to get a number of abortive animations, usually popping in and
out of existence when I'm dragging a near-to-full or full-height window side
to side, with its top edge across the top of the panel.  If I'm dragging
something of this sort, and my pointer strays up for the duration for the
drag, I get a horrible looking, wobbling, convulsing snap animation all the
way.

The problem here goes deeper:

I get that the idea is that, when snapping to maximise, you are putting the
titlebar on the top panel.  Lovely.  But having that snap effect happen even
when I'm not particularly putting any upward pressure on is actually pretty
damned annoying. You have the opposite situation to GNOME 3.

In GNOME 3, you have to shove the top edge to maximise, and that's great,
but even placing something tenderly against the edges will often result in
abortive animations, or, worse, empathy contact lists springing to 50
percent screen size.  In unity, the sides are right, the top is horrible.

Unity's animations imply that the action is “proper” and ready to go at the
time when the screen edge is touched.  As a matter of fact, however, if you
let go of the window when the animation is still a wee, tiny little orange
border about its corresponding window, the effect is no different as if you
were pushing the screen edge with all your might.

Furthermore, the animation loses its purpose.  Isn't it there so that, when
my mouse is in the right place, it gives me a translucent orange
demonstration of what's about to happen?  In that case, it should, upon my
mouse being correctly situated, expand smoothly to fill the screen, just as
my window will, should I go through with this action.

It doesn't do that.  It does this weird, meaningless proximity… thing.