Re: [Usability] window drop shadows?

[<john erling blad aftenposten no>]

> > > what i'd really like to see, which follows along the same idea, is
> having the
> > > item in focus display as normal (opaque, in this case) and have
all
> other items
> > > in the workspace that don't have focus become translucent (with
the
> option to
> > > adjust the level). that's a usability feature i've been waiting
for
> for many
> > > years but haven't come across yet. it'd be nice to see this in
future
> versions of
> > > gnome.
> >
> > All the current test implementation I have seen does this.

Seems like this would create a lot of problems for all kind o fuse cases
where you work in two or more applications at the same time. You could
try to minimize the problem by managing some kind of list of "recently
used applications" and only make applications translucent when they "age
sufficiently". Still you would run into troubles. Perhaps you must
register some window policy for this to work.

On other option which could work fairly well is if gtk could get hints
from the window manager and act accordingly. Lets say it would detect
that the window lost focus and somehow flattens the window content.
Buttons would loose much of its shadows, coloring would be reduced and
so forth.

Note that this could work together with translucency.

John