Animation durations

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 03 February 2014, Jens Reuterberg wrote:
> 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)

yeah, that's again how things look opposed to how long the aimation is.
at the sprint i quickly hacked a modification in the sliding popup thing that 
made popups fade in and slide only few pixels instead of all the way and the 
people i shown it to found it way faster.. even if the overall duration was 
exactly the same. (eh, i have to redo it properly and less hackish now i 
suppose ;)

> 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?

not really, since the animation is written in the qml of the plasmoid itself. 
It's easy to take the duration from some central config value, but what the 
animation does i fear will always require some craft by who writes..
we can use pre-made components for animations (we have some atm, i'm not a 
super fan of how they are made tough) but it will always only cover some 
cases.
so yeah, we need to pay attention on how animations are done, and maybe have a 
"poor animation style" category in bug reports...

-- 
Marco Martin