Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 25, 2006 21:54 UTC (Mon) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

This isn't crackrock, it's eye candy. The subtle difference is that one is designed to appeal to the normal human desire for ornamentation and ostentation, the other appeals only to the hard core geek's love of customizability and configurability. Eye candy is annoying to the geeks, but crackrock is a disaster for normal users.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 26, 2006 7:16 UTC (Tue) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link]

The thing is, window transparency is actually useful. It enables the user to read text from two windows at once without having to worry about overlapping windows. There are many many situations where you need to read text from two windows at once, or type something in one window based upon the text being displayed in another window. Transparency lets you overlap windows to a greater degree than you would otherwise be able to overlap the windows. I mean, yes, transparent overlapped windows can be hard to read, but opaque overlapped windows are impossible to read.

Almost every desktop environment in the world is screen-constrained in some way and will benefit from the ability to overlap transparent windows. Window transparency ranks right up there with subpixel font antialiasing in the category of things that most people think are eye candy but in reality are useful beyond all expectation.

Eye candy for me is something like Expose in OS X, which is not only inferior to virtual desktops but actively encourages unknowing users to develop bad window organizational habits which later on prevent the user from adopting virtual desktops.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 8:56 UTC (Wed) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link]

type something in one window based upon the text being displayed in another window

I don't know if any window manager has it anymore, but it makes sense to distinguish between which window has focus and which window has been raised to the top. That way your key strokes can go to one window while you have a clear view of another. The Amiga used to have this and (with some extension) you had single click to focus, double click to raise. Using transparency for this depends on both windows have visually compatible contents.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 11:29 UTC (Wed) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link]

Focus policy can let you type in one window while reading from another window, but it doesn't let you see both the window you're reading from and the window you're typing into simultaneously, unless the windows are so small that both windows can fit on the screen without overlap. Even when no overlap is possible, one often has so many windows that it is inconvenient to keep every particular pair of windows from overlapping.

Transparency isn't a panacea, and it isn't always the best solution, but it does give you one more option that you didn't have before, and that option is a useful one.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 14:29 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

I don't know if any window manager has it anymore, but it makes sense to distinguish between which window has focus and which window has been raised to the top. That way your key strokes can go to one window while you have a clear view of another.

Pretty much any window manager with a "focus follows mouse pointer" option can be configured this way.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 26, 2006 15:14 UTC (Tue) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

...crackrock is a disaster for normal users.

I think you're overstating your case considerably.

An example of a disaster would be having one's hard drive fail without a recent backup. Or having one's house hit by lightening and frying all the computers.

On the other hand, accidently clicking a window's maximization icon with the wrong mouse button and having the resulting window maximize along a single axis and not both is not a disaster. But this feature in particular has been in the past classified as "crackrock."

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 26, 2006 15:29 UTC (Tue) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

accidently clicking a window's maximization icon with the wrong mouse button and having the resulting window maximize along a single axis and not both is not a disaster.

Semantic arguments about what I meant by the word "disaster" (in a post that was supposed to be tongue in cheek, no less) aside, you should consider tatooing that statement on your forehead for posterity and explaining it to everyone you meet on the street.

I can think of no more persuasive argument against crackrock than a zealous proponent. :)

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 26, 2006 16:43 UTC (Tue) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

I can think of no more persuasive argument against crackrock than a zealous proponent. :)

Thanks for the label.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 26, 2006 8:27 UTC (Tue) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

Disabling it on compile time effectively removes it from code.
When composer is enabled at compile time, turning it on/off is a matter of configuration (single gconf-key).
Distributors can enable this on compile time, leaving off in configuration. But lately they tend to use other window manager for composited desktop (like Fedora did in FC6).

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 26, 2006 15:07 UTC (Tue) by Tara_Li (subscriber, #26706) [Link]

Honestly, I couldn't care less about new eye candy. Maybe this transparency junk will work out, maybe it won't. As for the commentor who said it'd make typing from one window into another window easier - take a stroll around MySpace some time and visit the pages with transparent boxes on top of busy backgrounds - it can be *VERY* hard to read.

No, what I'd like to see is faster, and not just "appears faster to the user" like some of the BS has been - I'd like to see solid profiling done and bottlenecks opened up.

I'd like to see reduced memory usage, with memory actually being released back to the general pool after it's done with. Why does a little applet to display a tiny little icon telling me whether my network connection is active require over 2MB of [anon] memory, and *ANOTHER* 36MB of various library things, including sound libraries for an applet that has no option to *MAKE* any sounds?

I'd like to see various configuration options returned - such as the nice ability to configure which window manager you want to use - instead of having to diddle around in some session manager configuration program that never seems to work - instead, someone cued me into the trick of killing the metacity process while starting Enlightenment, then saving my session when I logged out - Oh, wait, *THAT* option got removed in favor of "This session will automatically be logged out in 60 seconds" when I hit the logout button (because we just *HAD* to put the shutdown/restart options onto a completely separate button)

I don't know about the KDE people, but I'm really beginning to suspect, from what I've read about their new features, that they're having much the same problem - too much Windows Envy - to the point that they have *BECOME* Windows, complete with code so obfuscated nobody can really tell what's going on, bloat to rival the national debt, and an attitude of "Where do you want to go today? Where we bloody well TELL you you want to go!"

Does eyecandy exclude intellectual growth

Posted Sep 26, 2006 17:04 UTC (Tue) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link]

I agree. I would like to see the Free Software commmunity be a place where people could grow above the blocks and bubblegum stage. Which they can do, but the current emphasis seems not to encourage it. Which probably has to do with a drive for popularity, but something important is being lost too.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 4:31 UTC (Wed) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link]

The obvious difference between window transparency and transparency on myspace web sites is that window transparency is something that YOU control on a case by case basis instead of having it shoved down your throat by someone else.

I fully agree that forcibly imposed mandatory window transparency is a usability disaster, but GNOME is not proposing to force all windows to be transparent.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 11:17 UTC (Wed) by micampe (guest, #4384) [Link]

[...]I'd like to see solid profiling done and bottlenecks opened up.

To follow the profiling and optimization being done in Gnome, you can start by reading Federico Mena-Quintero web log. More people are working on it, but he's the one reporting more often.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 11:35 UTC (Wed) by micampe (guest, #4384) [Link]

Oh and also the Gnome performance list.

Good bits in GNOME 2.16 (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 27, 2006 13:30 UTC (Wed) by mitchskin (subscriber, #32405) [Link]

It's my understanding that window compositing is a major step on the road to being able to migrate windows from one X server to another, which is a non-eye-candy bit of functionality I'd really like to have. IIRC, the compositing step helps deal with windows that originated on servers with different color depths.