Re: [Usability]Persistence and continuity animations

[Kai Wetzel <kai wetzel1 freenet de>]

On Friday 25 October 2002 23:24, Gregory Merchan wrote:
[snip]

Cool idea! Some quick notes:

Maybe the originating window (along with a src rectangle inside said
window) could be set in a property on the top-level window to be
mapped (which could be changed later if, as you give as an example,
the src changes its place).

Communicating information from a launcher to observing parties,
allowing things like the "progress" dialog you mention, as well
as communicating the src window id and rectangle to be set
as a window property is something the "startup notification
protocol" Havoc Pennington proposed on the freedesktop.org
list a couple of days ago. Your suggetions could make good use
of the proposed standard (even if its specifics have been
criticized) don't you think ?

> Here are some options for the appearance of the animation:
>  Windows style - a moving resizing title bar.
[...]
> There are surely others, like Apple's "genie" effect. But the four I've
> listed seem speediest and least obtrusive.

I think the Windows style is even more "obstrusive" then the
"genie" effect :)

[..]
> If you disvalue animations more than you value persistence and continuity,
> then you do not want this. Please just ask that there be a way to turn
> animations off rather than interfering with those who may try to make this
> work. Understand also that some aspects of developing this may benefit you
> in some other way, even if there are no animations.

Yes, absolutely. While some people will _disvalue_ animations (or this 
particular one) e.g. because they think that it's conveying wrong information 
(the window doesn't originate "from the launcher" any more then the 
home-made chocolate that arrived today originated "from the internet" but
was rather shipped "from Ohio"), for some other people animations of this kind
cause more usability trouble then it's worth so a potential standard (or
document describing this feature) must explicitely state that implementations
_should_ allow to turn this (or all) anymations off easily for usability
reasons.

As a side node there are some people who _value_ animations highly in this
context but _disvalue_ animations that are not smooth even more because
to them they add distraction but completely fail to provide the illusion of
smoothness or perceived continuity which could be one of the reasons
why the Windows style and OS X "genie" effect are felt as beeing 
obstrusive (besides the letter is not very subtle): they are not smooth.[1]

kai

[1] Windows 98 on a Duron, OS X 10.2 on a new iBook.