[Usability] Animations in GNOME...

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

An old bunch of bugs report [1,2] I once filed harasses me over and
over. I still haven't come to a useful conclusion, nor got over the
brainstorming point. Hereby I ask you for help, since you're after all
the main UI instance.

What my problem is all about: Animations.
Where to put them? When to show them? How to control them?
We have to define clear rules for WHEN exactly to use them (quantity),
HOW/in what way/strength to use them (quality).

Pros:
- Sometimes they make much clearer what happens (D'n'D)
- They look extremely cool (edit your Epiphany toolbar)

Cons:
- They need ressources. Weak machines might cough and refuse to be
responsive enough to be useful
- They annoy (metacity window closing animation)

So they convey coolness and information, but on the other hand need
ressources and may annoy the user if used excessively. For now, I see
two approaches for defining the scope of animations:

Separatistic approach: Define on a per-app basis whether animations are
used - i.e. when hiding the panel, one might like to have them, but not
when closing metacity

Global approach: Have one central point where we define whether to use
them or not (gconf/xsetting, that is).

Is there a reasonable way to go without introducing zillion of
additional switches? Maybe we could introduce some animation schemes the
user can select among and introduce different classes of animations
(useful/decoration) so that each animation can be categorized?

Any ideas? I'm lost, really.


[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98426
[2] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92867

-- 
Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>