Animation durations

[Jens Reuterberg]

The issue here is not only about the length of animation but the STYLE of 
animation. This is of course my own personal small tests on friends/family 
(they are hardly anywhere near definitive or even scientific) but the most 
hated bit isn't the speed but things like the "lagging animation".

You know the one where an exaggerated "click box" hoovers after the mouse 
pointer in system tray and on the netbook layouts "Search & Launch"? You can 
still click - it doesn't say anything, it doesn't give the user any 
information - its simply decoration. But every single one got annoyed and 
ignored clicking until it became "aligned" with the mouse pointer.

Speed in sliding windows or for that matter things like the launcher can be 
annoying since again its only decorative. (personally I turn off all 
animations but thats just me)

Plus there are two issues at play here: 
1) Should the speed be configured by the user
2) How the hell do you configure the speed?

I'd think that the second demands a fresh look at system settings and how they 
are laid out and how to make them more easily navigated, interacted with and 
uniform.

The first one I'd say: set the speed and style of animation (lets just set a 
good speed) - just make it editable at most base level with three speeds 
described as words. (like it is now) Then if possible let the style be 
predefined or handled by the effects tab?

Since we don't have time for making a thorough research into it and barring 
whether we can find any I'd suggest let us the devs test it at home and 
publish suggestions here and then assume that whatever sticks is the correct 
one. 

tl;dr If configurability becomes even a slight issue, ignore it and we set the 
speed. 
"Carthage should be destroyed" addendum: We need to look at the system 
settings.

On Monday 03 February 2014 10.45.21 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On 03.02.2014 00:50, Vishesh Handa wrote:
> > On Sunday 02 February 2014 16:59:00 Marco Martin wrote:
> >> i'm not sure if configurability is a good idea at all.
> > 
> > Could you please elaborate on rationale behind this? Is it just technical?
> > 
> >> the only this that should be configurable is the possibility to centrally
> >> disable all animations.
> >> if due to that central configuration units will report 0 as those
> >> lengths,
> >> that's ok
> > 
> > I like the fact that I can still have animations, but that they aren't
> > very
> > slow and annoying.
> > 
> > To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi - "Only a Sith deals in absolutes"
> 
> Since animations being too slow is a criticism I often heard about
> Plasma 1, I agree with Vishesh here. Configuration on the level of exact
> milliseconds dwould not be a good idea, but being able to choose between
> a few distinct speed levels could make sense. If people could set the
> exact values, they might set slightly imperfect values, where they'd not
> consciously notice the imperfection, but it would still _feel_ "wrong"
> to them.
> That's why the exact values for these levels should be based on either
> published scientific research or our own studies (I'd prefer published
> studies if we find them, because conducting such studies well would
> require a lot of work). We'd want sensible levels that work well.
> 
> tl;dr: +1 for configurability in general, but _we_ pick the exact values.
> 
> 
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