Better animations

[Fred]

Binary package hint: metacity

The minimize animation in Metacity is ugly. It is very trivial and not up to par with other the animations from other operating systems which are over 10 years old.

Tthe animation is in class with Windows 3.11
There is much better animation in Windows 95 than in Metacity.

I am mostly talking about the "minimize window" animation.

[Richard Seguin (sectech)]

I understand that your talking about metacity, but what is your desktop environment? Ubuntu? What version? Have you tried to download any themes from gnome-look? (http://www.gnome-look.org/)

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

I am using Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" with the GNOME 2.22.1 desktop environment.

This is about animations (in particular the 'minimize window' animation), not about themes. This have nothing todo with themes.

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

Suggestions as to what would be better are welcome.

Are you talking about the minimise effect with the compositor turned on, or not?

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

Note that I don't mean compiz or something, I mean Metacity's own compositor. You can find the answer by typing

gconftool -g /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

I didn't know that Metacity has any own compositor.

I am using Ubuntu 8.04 and when I don't have Compiz enabled, it is using Metacity without compositing.
I am talking about the "minimize effect" when the compositor is not turned on.

$ gconftool -g /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager
false

It looks ugly with just a black frame around the window, then it gets smaller into the taskbar.
In Windows XP, its much nicer. It's been nicer even since Windows 95, I think.

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

It's not a huge priority, since people can use Metacity's compositor which has a better minimise effect, but if you have any better ideas as to how it should look, please let us know.

The minimise effect clearly works as designed, though (your complaint is that it should work differently), so I'm changing this to a wishlist bug.

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

(oops, trying that again)

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Yes, I agree with you that it is not a huge priority.
It is just a superficial cosmetic change.

But how do I turn on Metacity's compositor, and why is it not enabled by default?

[Marnanel Thurman (marnanel)]

You can turn it on with

gconftool -s /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager true --type=bool

or by running gconf-editor, navigating to /apps/metacity/general, and turning on "compositing_manager". As to why it's not on by default, I don't know: that's a question for the packagers.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> that's a question for the packagers.

not using the composite is the upstream default no? that's just not changed in a distribution specific way

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Ah, now I enabled Metacity compositor, thanks.
Cool, now I have shadows...

But the Metacity compositor needs improvement too, the "minimize effect" is different but still sucks with compositing enabled.
The minimize effect when Metacity compositor is enabled is kinda even worse. Instead of a thin ugly black frame, its now a solid black window.

[manzur (sl-solaris)]

i really think that gnome metacity could have better animations by default, even windows xp has better animation, (in particular the 'minimize window' animation) as fred said, but maybe this could be discuss in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com

[zamiere (zamiere)]

I hope this will change in the next 10 years.

For disable the ugly frame, set
/apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources
to true.

[zamiere (zamiere)]

(And don't forget enable accessibility to disable another ugly black grid when resizing/moving)