unity-design team mailing list archive

[Alan Bell <alanbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I would like to propose removal of the 'shadow' cast by the unity top panel.

This shadow causes the following bugs

#956863 Top panel shadow is drawn above presentation when using LO 
Impress with Presenter Console
#763579 Panel drop shadow causes issues for screencasting apps
#871758 Top Bar, window managment - top bar shadow not falling on 
restored windows that are partially off the top edge of the screen
#892718 [multimonitor] Opening dash on one screen removes panel shadow 
on the other
#967294 Unity panel shadow should not draw over unfocussed windows

The basic problem is that the shadow is not semantically a shadow at 
all, it isn't an openGL rendered consequence of the panel being above 
the desktop with a lightsource illuminating it and casting a shadow. It 
is just a translucent PNG stuck on the screen as decoration and isn't in 
the NUX layer outside the scope of compiz - like the top panel is. Under 
normal circumstances the shadow is positioned close to where the bottom 
of the panel should be if the panel is the default size - this is 
delicate. If you zoom into the desktop the shadow zooms but the panel 
doesn't and all the bugs kind of relate to the shadow and panel becoming 
disconnected with each other, because they are not actually attached to 
each other. I don't think these problems can be fixed with the current 
implementation strategy - if it was a shadow actually cast by the panel 
it might work better.

Visually I don't think the shadow really adds anything to the desktop 
experience, and the assorted bugs really detract from it and do not give 
the pixel perfect impression we are going for.

I am happy to do the work to patch it out if people agree.


Alan.


--
I work at http://libertus.co.uk