Re: [Usability] Animations in GNOME...

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 21:33, Christian Neumair wrote:

> 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?

>From an accessibility point of view, a single switch that turns off all
animations would probably be useful, for some (not necessarily clear to
me) definition of "all animations".  Thin clients like Sun Ray also need
a way to turn off anything that's going to send lots of unnecessary
display traffic over the wire, which includes "all animations" plus a
bunch of other things (such as using images for your desktop
background).

Categorisation by utility might be one approach, another might be
categorisation by animation frequency-- either "don't animate anything
at more/less than x frames per second", or "switch off anything that
might animate at fewer than x or more than y frames per second". 
Section 508 guidelines suggest that nothing on screen should animate at
a rate between 2 and 55 frames per second, for example, to avoid
inducing seizures in susceptible users.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems