Drawer takes long time to appear when using Compiz

[Ryan Thompson]

Binary package hint: gnome-applets

When compiz is enabled, any drawer in the panel takes about one second to open. It seems as if the Drawer is waiting for Compiz to finish its "create window" animation for the drawer before expanding, but there's no actual animation - the drawer just sits there closed for about a full second before opening. This is annoying, as the purpose of the panel is to provide *quick* access to things.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

It pops up instantly for me. Are, you, by any chance, using fglrx and xserver-xgl? Or, maybe dual monitors and nvidia?

[Ryan Thompson (rct86)]

I am not using xgl. I have a Dell Inspiron E1405 with an Intel GMA 945.

I should explain a bit more clearly what happens. When I click on the drawer, it wants to play an animation of it expanding. So it initially creates a window that is very small, just big enough for the hide button. Then, it expands the window frame by frame until it reaches its proper size.

However, when compiz is running, there is a one second delay between the creation of the drawer window and the subsequent expansion. So for one second after clicking the drawer, I have nothing but the drawer hiding button. Then it finishes opening.

I have noticed similar behavior with other programs that like to do the same sort of "roll out" animation, such as yakuake when it is first opened. It seems like the application's window is not allowed to change size while a Compiz animation is playing. (Although no compiz animation actually plays for the drawer.)

[Lorenzo Castellana (lore-artifex)]

I can confirm what Travis has said. The drawer needs a second to show icons inside. I found a YouTube video that shows exactly this problem. It seems that it's an old unresolved bug.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APTAu4ZRd60

I use a standard Gutsy Gibbon installation with Compiz Fusion enabled.

[Ryan Thompson (rct86)]

That video shows *two* bugs. The first is the one that I'm talking about, with the opening delay. The second is a bug with focus-stealing-prevention. I have not experienced the focus-stealing bug in a while. However, the opening delay shows exactly what I'm talking about. Notice that regardless of the length of the animation, the drawer takes a full second after the click before it expands. In my case, there is no animation at all. It simply stays in that closed state for a full second.

[pavel (poolee)]

I have the same problem with drawer open delay. I have clean install of Gutsy with GMA900 graphic card.

[Adam Bolte (boltronics)]

Same issue here with Gutsy using a nVidia Quadro FX 570M on a Lenovo T61p notebook using the 'nvidia' binary drivers from 'restricted'.

As it is, it's unfortunately quicker just to add icons to the GNOME menu. I hope this bug is fixed soon.

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

Pretty sure this is a dupe of bug #10895 "Gnome drawer applet delays and unresponsiveness".

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/108951

...which is marked as confirmed and low importance. It's driving me *nuts*, though.

The older bug has a workaround for Compiz-Fusion's predecessor, Beryl, which involves changing the focus-stealing prevention settings. However I have been unable to get this workaround to function in Compiz.

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

"bug #10895" should have read "bug #108951". Sorry.