Windows2000 coolness

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks kd-dev com>]

    All,
	I just saw somebody using Win2K (final beta) for the first time.
I'm assuming that (like me) most of the people here haven't wasted their
time playing with the Win2K betas.

	Overall, it looks like the same old crap, but there is one feature
that is VERY cool.  It's hard to describe, and you need to see it to get
an idea of what it looks like.  Menus "fade" into existance.

	Imagine if menus came into existance by a short, 3-frame
animation.  The first frame is a barely-visible, translucent box.  The
next frame looks like E's translucent window moves.  The last frame looks
like the menu.

	The animation happens near-instantly, and does not delay the
appearance/usage of the menu, so it's a very subtle effect, but I
immediately noticed it.  It was very impressive.

	As you scroll through the menus in a menubar (or the Start
button), they do not fade out of existance.  They simply disappear, which
it what menus have always done.  However, if you select an item from the
menu, the menu (and the selected item) *does* fade out of existance.

	Furthermore, if you select an item, that item, which is
highlighted, fades out of existance approximately 1 frame behind the menu,
giving your brain just enough time to get confirmation that you selected
the correct item.  That visual confirmation is something that I've only
seen on Macs with their 
"blink-the-selected-item-three-times-before-disappearing" feature, which
slowed the user down too much.

	This feature also applies to tooltips.

	I do not know how many "frames" Win2K actually uses in their
animation, but it's fast enough to not slow down the user.  Also, the
feature can be turned off. If you go under Control Panel->Display->Effects
there is a drop-down option called "Use transition effects for menus and
tooltips" which offers the choices "Fade Effect", "Scroll Effect", and
"None".  Scroll Effect is the same annoying crap we saw in Win98.

	I would LOVE to see this in Gnome.  My questions are:

1) Where would this go?  In the Gtk+ toolkit, perhaps as part of a theme?
In the Window Manager?  My assumption, since it is limited to menus and
tooltips, is that it would belong in the toolkit--but in that case, how
would you turn it "on" and "off" for all applications?

2) How do we keep this fast?  Do we use some trick feature of the video
card, as is the case with Win98's smooth scrolling?  Would we want to add
extra features to the X display server?  Or would it be done with Imlib?

	If we should move this discussion to the gtk-devel-list (or some
other list), let me know and I'll forward this message there.  But if we
want new users to consider Gnome a "modern" user interface, this feature
will be a requirement.  Besides that, it looks cool as hell :).


--Derek