Application start animation

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Sunday 24 October 2010 20:14:31 Marco Martin wrote:
> On Sunday 24 October 2010, Ivan Cukic wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've received a nice idea from a user, but I'm unsure how possible it is
> > to implement.
> > 
> > The idea is to have a visual clue from where the application is started -
> > to expand it from the point of launch like we do for minimization and
> > maximization of the windows.
> 
> adding cc to kwin, since is a thing that would be implemented there.
> 
> i think the only problem is (if i'm correct) that is not possible for kwin
> to have the window pixmap before it's mapped. (same problem of sliding
> popup not working the first time)
> then setting the initial geometry for the effect sgouldn't be hard
> (provided you can fetch some way the window id of the application you just
> started)
The most difficult part would be to have the window pixmap handy before it is 
rendered. If you have an NVIDIA card use a complex window, minimize it, 
unminimize it and watch how laggy the magic lamp effect becomes. So we would 
need the pixmap before the window is rendered (screenshot of last usage 
whatever).

Another problem is the start delay. There are applications which start fast 
(most of our KDE stuff), but there are also some which start totally slow. 
E.g. Firefox starts so slow that I could use it to test the bouncing cursor 
effect - no surprise given that it has to pull in GTK and everything.

Also windows with Splash Screens could be a problem - no real problem for KDE 
apps as our apps start fast and don't need a splash screen ;-)

Overall it seems to me that there are quite some corner cases but nothing 
which is unfixable. If you want to work on it, we can give some assistance :-)

Martin