4 ms·
It is just added latency for questionable benefit. OTOH, it could actually be helpful to conceptualize the idea of virtual desktops. Once already used to virt
by snvzz 3y ago
It is just added latency for questionable benefit.
OTOH, it could actually be helpful to conceptualize the idea of virtual desktops.
Once already used to virtual desktops, the cube becomes cruft.
- hnlmorg 3y agoIt’s fun. That’s benefit alone for a lot of people.
- tssva 3y ago"It is just added latency for questionable benefit." I guess it depends on how beneficial you consider whimsy. I'll trade a little efficiency for a little whimsy most days.
- JohnFen 3y agoFun is a valuable benefit.
- snvzz 3y agoAbsolutely. If you love it, go ahead. I remember I even used it without the switch animation, as the latency irritated me. Just to fiddle by manually grabbing the cube and spinning it, while thinking.
- kaba0 3y agoAnimations have a useful role - they provide often necessary visual cues on the context. For example, randomly jumping in a text page won’t tell you where you are now in relation to the previous position. Scrolling through does.
- Narishma 3y ago> For example, randomly jumping in a text page won’t tell you where you are now in relation to the previous position. That's what scrollbars used to be good at, before they were dumbed down for dubious aesthetic reasons.
- rgoulter 3y agoRight. On Gnome, when I switch left/right between virtual workspaces, the animation provides some indication of the switch. When I tried xfce, there was no animation, it didn't feel like an improvement. Perhaps this is down to preferences.
- mrob 3y agoIt's useful the first few times, and annoying time wasting all the thousands of times after that. Animations should only be included if there's an easy way to turn them off.
- kaba0 3y agoHow is that 20ms, or even less constitutes waiting?
- mrob 3y agoI've never seen a UI animation that quick. Most UI animations are hundreds of milliseconds. And even if somebody did make one, it would still be annoying. Even a little latency is enough to break the sensation that the computer is part of my own body, and instead make it feel like a third party I'm commanding.
- hnlmorg 3y agoI can’t see I’ve ever felt like a computer is part of my own body. And I’ve been writing software for close to 40 years.
- Noneofya 3y agoEither you’ve been using only crappy computers/software then or you’re not getting what they’re talking about. Do you feel like your car is an extension of your body when you’re driving? Because science showed that’s exactly how humans behave when driving. This is how our brain works with automatic motor functions.
- kaba0 3y agoLiterally nothing happens instantly in real life, why should it be different with computers?
- mrob 3y agoAll hands tools (including common things like pencils and toothbrushes) react to your movement with zero added latency. Computers should be the same.
- snvzz 3y ago>Scrolling through does. Yet "smooth scrolling" is latency, and to most who are already used to scrolling, it is extremely unpleasant. When one does scroll (i.e. move the viewport of a larger screen that's being presented through the inside of a window), it is because one wishes to already be seeing the target position. Any latency through added animation destroys the illusion. I quickly close any webpage that forces that strong discomfort upon me. And switch away from any application that does it against my wishes.
- jwells89 3y agoThough “smooth scrolling” that interpolates between detents is a considerably different creature than “smooth scrolling” that tracks touch and has inertia resulting from it. The former is like nails on a chalkboard whereas I find tracking/inertial scrolling quite pleasing with how it lets one use muscle memory to “fling” the page to a particular point with decent accuracy.
- CSSer 3y agoI find it easier to maintain mental conceptions of three dimensional objects in my current working memory than I do a series of flat planes. I feel that we’re wired that way. Take macOS as an example. The current space is shown as the largest view, which is silly because you’re already on it. The other spaces are shown as little thumbnails you can hardly see the contents of. You can either slide between spaces one at a time or click. In the cube, each face is the same size, you can see the backside of each window and you can view each window’s contents from an angle. It’s the same reason a book is easier to flip through than a Kindle. I really wish we could shake this strange obsession with minimalism and return to embracing skeuomorphic representations. Computers should adapt to us, not us to them. We have insane transistor counts and memory density at our disposal. Why shouldn’t we take advantage of that to provide even questionable benefits, as you put it, to our user experience?
- jwells89 3y agoFor virtual desktops I always liked the original animation OS X used for that back in 10.5 and 10.6, where the camera pulled back to show an overhead view of your grid of desktops, including miniaturized versions of all of your windows. It did well to establish the idea that your current desktop was just a portion of a much larger surface, and by switching desktops you were changing the portion you were working in. It also leveraged spatial memory, as many Mac UI features over the years have. The implementation in current versions of macOS, which is your typical linear setup similar that found in GNOME, is harder to conceptualize for users because its animations don’t communicate nearly as effectively, plus by default desktops move around based on frequency of usage which screws with spatial memory.
- selectodude 3y agoThere’s very little in current versions of macOS that weren’t better in 10.6.
- Kim_Bruning 3y agoEh, it places your windows in a 3D navigable space, which actually was sort of useful to quickly take in where you were at a glance. So not 100% cruft.
- haolez 3y agoIt depends on the implementation. If the actions don't wait for the animation to complete to do work, then you can move ahead of the animations (and maybe they could gracefully merge from one into the next animation).
- thomastjeffery 3y agoWhen you already know what desktop you need to go to, then yes. Otherwise, this is a great way to see where you put that window you are looking for.