KWin highlight window effect enabled by default?

[Martin Gräßlin]

Am Dienstag 22 Dezember 2009 22:42:55 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> On December 20, 2009, Lucas Murray wrote:
> > Just to summarise: I consider that enabling the KWin highlight window
> > effect by default is the wrong choice and that the change should be
> > reverted before the next KDE SC release.
> 
> fwiw, i whole-heartedly agree with everything Lucas wrote. +1 from me.
> 
> perhaps the person(s) who enabled it by default could help us understand
>  the reasoning more? if there isn't a compelling reason there, i think
>  Lucas is quite correct.
> 
I run the effect several days without noticiing any of the problems why it 
wasn't enabled in 4.3. Lucas noticed some problems  and those were fixed (e.g. 
with multiple desktops) or should be fixed (e.g. the mentioned problem on fast 
movement). Personally I think this is an effect which adds lots of 
functionality and usability. For me it is very useful for example to just have 
a peak at a window, to read a few lines of text on a web page or to look at 
the opened documentation in Qt Assistant... Of course I'm an experienced user 
and have not done any usability studies on that subject ;-)

Of course I understand the reasoning that it is one of Windows 7 main user 
interface points. But I think we have enough unique features and new 
improvements in 4.4 that we do not have to fear that users think we only copy 
from Windows and it should not be a reason to  turn off useful features. With 
the same arguments we would have to turn off for example Present Windows as 
it's "just a copy of MacOS".

The highlight windows effect is not only used for the taskbar highlights, but I 
also turned it on in the "classic" non-composited tabbox to provide the same 
highlight of the current selected window as the boxswitch effect does. In fact 
I was thinking about switching off boxswitch by default in favor for the 
classic tabbox with the highlight effect as that one scales better for a larger 
number of windows (thumbnails are too small in boxswitch effect). So here we 
have the problem that turning on the effect is not side-effect free. If you want 
to use it for alt+tab you have to use it for taskbar as well as it is not 
configurable (and it's too late for 4.4).

Personally I do not object to a default off although I do not have the same 
doubts as mentioned by Lucas. 
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