On 26 Aug 2008, at 00:52, Graham Cox wrote:
On 26 Aug 2008, at 8:00 am, Jonathan Dann wrote:Using the private APIs / the method that Rob showed is perfectly fast.I'd really like this made easier too, so I filed an enhancement request rdar://6174287Is it possible to file a de-enhancement request? ;-)
Nice, I usually resist writing LOL, but that did make me LOL!
Am I the only one mystified by the attraction of this particular effect? It burns CPU/GPU time like there's no tomorrow for no apparent benefit to the usability of the UI. The original idea of semi-transparent windows seems a good one - you can still read some of the content behind which can enhance usability when you need a quick reminder of what's there without having to activate the window. For example there are times when you have no choice but to retype something you can see in one window and enter it in a field in another (admittedly these times have got a lot rarer with static text being often selectable/copyable, but it still happens).With blurring, the ability to do that has been wiped out in a lot of cases. Why? What's the metaphor for a blurring window? Frosted glass? How many windows in the real world use frosted glass? Not many in proportion to transparent glass, that's for sure. When I first saw Vista I chuckled at the widespread use of the blurring effect because it seemed like those guys had introduced some gratuitous eye-candy without getting in any way why they'd done it. I was sorry to see that the joke was on us in Leopard. Leopard's blurring is subtler than Vista's, so let's be grateful for small mercies - but I do think we ought to be debating why we have this at all.A public API for this would mean that every man and his dog will be adding blurring because it's "cool" without thinking about what it *means*. It's going to be the brushed metal of the next few OS revs I fear.
I know what you mean. It's a very fine line to tread when working on a GUI app, but I'm not convinced that *absolutely* everything has to mean something, just the overwhelming majority. I think in this case its one of those things that does add a nice touch to the UI, if used very sparingly. In the case of a contextual menu I think that transparency would be wrong as the user is trying to read the menu text and too much of the masked (for example) text view below would be distracting. I quite like the subtlety of the blurring, and come to think of it, it may imply that the view that blurs is a transient one. I don't keep menus open for long enough for the CPU usage to be an issue, and I don't think many would.
As always, I'm open to a rebuke! :) Take care, Jonathan http://espresso-served-here.com
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