Visual effects

[Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org>]

Hi,

I've tried recently KDE, and by default it has too much visual effects,
IMHO. With time, it seems that GNOME follows the same path, there are
more and more visual effects.

I think too much visual effects is bad for a distraction-free desktop.
Exactly the same principle applies for presentation slides. To take an
extreme example, it's not really a good idea to add a firework animation
between each slide… The public will be less concentrated on the contents
of the presentation. On a desktop you want to focus on the work you're
working on.

If more and more visual effects are added to GNOME, and if at one point
we realize (too late) that it's too much, removing lots of visual
effects for the next release will be seen as a regression, and it'll be
much harder to explain to users.

The recent example that I have in mind is the background fading when
selecting a row in a GtkTreeView (and for GtkListBox too I think). It's
really a small detail: when a row is deselected, the background color
goes from blue to white with a progressive fading. And inversely when
you select a row. Now try the following steps, I think you will be
slightly distracted by the background fading of the *deselected* row:

1. Select a row in the list, if not already done.
2. You're searching another item in the list, so you read each item one
by one, until you find what you're searching for (if there is no search
functionality).
3. Your eyes are focused on the new row you want to select, and you
select that row!
4. If the previous selected row is still visible on the screen, you'll
be slightly distracted by the background fading of the row being
deselected.

Does that make sense? I know it's really a small detail, but when
updating gtk+ recently and seeing this for the first time, I thought it
was "too much". In KDE there are probably more evident examples.

Best regards,
Sébastien