[launcher] feedback too subtle upon launching an application

Bug #684135 reported by Florian Boucault
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
unity-2d
Fix Released
High
Olivier Tilloy

Bug Description

When launching an application, the launching feedback (today a glow behind the icon) is too subtle and might go unnoticed.

Related branches

Changed in upicek:
importance: Medium → High
Changed in upicek:
milestone: none → 0.4
tags: added: maverick-only
affects: upicek → unity-2d
Changed in unity-2d:
milestone: 0.4 → none
milestone: none → 3.4
Changed in unity-2d:
assignee: nobody → Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
tags: added: maverick-delta
Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Do we have a mockup/animation of what the desired feedback is?

Revision history for this message
Florian Boucault (fboucault) wrote :

No, we have to make it up.

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

So we want a more visible and expressive launching feedback, but it has to remain unobtrusive.
The glow effect is indeed way too subtle in the current implementation.

Since we don’t have a clear idea of how to solve the problem (read: mockups to implement), I’m going to try various possibilities. For each I’ll attach a patch that can be applied to the trunk (lp:unity-2d/0.4) to test. Please test and comment. Feel free to attach enhanced proposals too, and let’s see if we can agree on one of them.

Changed in unity-2d:
status: Confirmed → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Proposal #1: a larger glow. The size of the glow is increased to 110% of its current size, making it more visible, present.

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Proposal #2: make the background of the icon rotate clockwise. Note that the icon itself won’t rotate, I tested this solution and it really felt too much.

Revision history for this message
Ugo Riboni (uriboni) wrote :

I tried the other two animations but they didn't convince me much.
I gave it a shot at something that may work, it's in the attached patch (it should apply to trunk with a bit of fuzz).
You can also try moving the animation added by that patch to just the background instead of the entire item.

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Ugo: I tested your patch (in fact I had tried similar effects yesterday), and even though I think a bounce effect would solve the problem nicely, the effect your patch achieves look very mechanical, jerky. Do you know how to smooth it, to make it bounce in a way that feels easy to the eye?

Other remarks on the patch itself:
 - You can remove the glow Image altogether if it’s never shown.
 - I would test setting the max value of the effect to more than 1.0, so that it effectively bounces back and forth, what do you think?

Revision history for this message
Florian Boucault (fboucault) wrote :

Bounce and rotation are too intrusive. Larger glow is nice though it has some nasty artifacts. I attach a glow.png that achieves the same effect without the artifacts.

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

The enhanced glow image looks good to me (note that with it the patch that modifies its scale is not needed).
I’ll go ahead and merge it.

Olivier Tilloy (osomon)
Changed in unity-2d:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) wrote : Re: [Bug 684135] Re: [launcher] feedback too subtle upon launching an application

I'd like us to change tack on this altogether. For both Unity-2D and Unity:

 * Make the icons the Natty size
 * Drop the "glowing tiles" for icons, so we get shape back
 * Use the tile flash for "starting" animation... keep flashing till
it's started, then stop

So, neither running nor not-running apps get a tile, but we use the
tile-flash for the starting animation. We can consider using it for the
attention-grab animation too. And we can use it also, potentially, for
the focus indication during keyboard interaction.

Mark

Revision history for this message
Florian Boucault (fboucault) wrote :

@Mark: that sounds like an interesting plan. I am not sure I am able to visualize just reading it though. Can we involve Otto on this?
Let's open a separate bug that affects Unity and Unity 2D to deal with it (this bug was Unity 2D Maverick specific).

Revision history for this message
Florian Boucault (fboucault) wrote :

@Mark: maybe bug #676457 describes what you were describing?

Revision history for this message
Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) wrote :

Florian, it describes part of it, yes. What I'm saying here is slightly
different, though:

 * the backlight should be "off" in the normal case, running or not
 * the backlight should flash when starting the app, and
 * the backlight could also be used to indicate focus in keyboard
navigation through the launcher

Mark

visibility: private → public
Changed in unity-2d:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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