Grey flashing on window open and close

[ainq]

Gala currently animates before window render, resulting in a grey window animating in, and then flashing in the contents. This is very apparent in Switchboard animations.
Also, Gala does not keep a window state cache, so closing a window or returning to the homepage on Switchboard both flash in a grey screen before fading.
To duplicate, open a window, close the window, open slingshot, click any plug, click the home button, note that at least 1 panel has a grey screen flashed in.
I've looked through the compiz fusion code, and compiz does cache the window state, so closing windows doesn't flash a grey screen.

EDIT: Changing animation speed does not constitute a fix. Switchboard does not use the slide anymore, so no need for that fix. The slow exit animation, however, makes this very jarring.

Technically, it wouldn't be difficult at all to cache the window state, especially if the window isn't rendering anymore.

Also, the opening grey flash is very noticeable for slow-opening apps (think office suites), so animating the window after the first frame or so would really help.

[Tom Beckmann (tombeckmann)]

Thanks to the new animations you won't really notice this anymore.

[ainq (ainq)]

@tombeckmann:
It's hardly noticeable in the open/restore animation, but very noticeable in the exit animation. It's VERY jarring for full screen apps, and even Windows caches the window close state.
Marking for inclusion in other projects.

[Cassidy James Blaede (cassidyjames)]

I agree that simply changing animation times does not constitute a fix. It sounds like properly caching the contents is the right course of action for closing, and waiting to animate until the first frame is proper for opening.

[Avi Romanoff (aroman)]

is anyone still having this issue? I have some graphical bugs with gala, but gray boxes when opening/closing windows is not one of them.

[Tom Beckmann (tombeckmann)]

We have two options here: either changing the animations in a way that it's less noticeable or fixing it in mutter. Caching the window contents on gala's side may be possible, but I don't consider this a good option.
Assigning to the designer team because of the animations, if that's not an option either, we'll have to report it for libmutter, if it's not already reported.

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

I don't notice any flashing tbh. But I agree that if it needs to be cached that should probably happen in Mutter.