Re: [Usability]All animations should be disableable

["John J. Boyer" <director chpi org>]

Greg,
How do animations affect accessibility for people with disabilities? Some 
people may just find animations irritating. 
John

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Gregory Merchan wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 09:43:22PM +0100, MArk Finlay wrote:
> > There has been much flaming about the Metacity minimise animation and
> > I'm sure that there will be if the launch feedback in 2.2 isn't
> > disablable.
> > 
> > You don't need to explain to me why preferences are bad or why these
> > animations are there in the first place. I'm a stong believer in the
> > Gnome to philosophies.
> > 
> > What I cannot work out is what the negitive effects of having a "disable
> > minimse animation" gconf key. How would that option possibly impact the
> > "web of preferences" negitively. Turing of an animation has no knock on
> > effect AFAIK. 
> > 
> > So what are the arguements against adding these particualar options? To
> > me the upside are:
> > 1. Helps ppl running gnome2 on slow hardware
> > 2. Allow's advanced users some control without negitively effecting
> > "non-technical users"
> 
> OS/2 and, iirc, even pre-10 MacOS had window animations. I ran OS/2 on
> a 486DX 33MHz machine with 8Mb of RAM.  Slow hardware should not be
> a problem.
> 
> However, there is a specification problem. There is no way for a window
> manager (or app) to know from where animations begin and to where they go.
> Animations should provide an illusion of continuity. When you open a file
> from a folder view or run an app from a menu, there should be an animation
> connecting the file's icon or the menu item and the window which opens.
> When a window is minimized, the animation should connect the window and
> whatever represents minimized windows. When a window is closed, it should
> go back to from where it came.
> 
> The only complaint I recall about animation is that it is too slow.
> If so, that is a bug and an option to disable animations would be one
> of the "Please unbreak this" options.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Greg Merchan
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