Some windows, like the system settings application, open a complete new window within the same window, when you click on an option, the problem is that without a proper transition you don't know that it is in the same window, that's why I would suggest to make a proper animation, like flipping the window, as if the clicked item was on the other side of the window, same procedure, when you go back, except that transition should be reversed.

elementaryos solved it slightly different, by using sliding animations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNB-n2owliw

Yes, I am in favour of this too, and I happen to think the elementaryos solution is pretty slick indeed. Personally I would not be keen on a 'flipping' animation, although we are probably visualising different things. However If this were to be implemented then it should be done in a way that would allow the user to choose his/her preferred animation.

Lets make a mock animation of this flip thing.... Give me a day or two and I'll whip something up...

Ok so we have the "Flip" animation. Should I do some other animation things at the same time? Just to have something to compare it with?

jensreuterberg wrote:Lets make a mock animation of this flip thing.... Give me a day or two and I'll whip something up...

Ok so we have the "Flip" animation. Should I do some other animation things at the same time? Just to have something to compare it with?

maybe somehting similar as the one from elementaryos in the OP

I think I like the slide better than a flip. A flip can easily be distracting, the slide is more subtle.

Ok so I'm gonna do the flip animation, the slide animation .... some other idea to make it an even three and something not used before as a good animation? How about like a page turn? Like those old clock-radios? It folds in the middle?

What about simple crossfade?

Ok I'll add it to the list (just got swamped so this may take a day more to do haha) - so when you say "cross fade" what exactly do you mean? I know what it means in term of audio but not animation.

hmmm, not sure how it is called in english, but there is any animation in kwin that fades out old VD, and fade in new one. It is less intrusive than 3D cube or slide.

I was thinking about something like that.

Cross fade just means you put the two images on top of each other and fade in the alpha channel of one of them simultaneously with fading out the other one.

I'm unsure cross fade is a good choice here. The slide animation gives a nice forward/back feeling, while crossfade doesn't. You can try it out in bespin, it has crossfade for tabs, and while it looks slick, I don't find it very helpful usability-wise. It certainly doesn't make it easier to grasp what happened to me.

Also I might be wrong but I don't see any sane way to do the slide or flip thing in QWidget based applications. Maybe there's a clever way to do it which I don't see, though.

Greetings,
Sven

Lets talk technical issues when the technical issues crop up. If there is a way someone will find it and if the result seems promising enough - it has a better chance of being found. If not possible at all - well then we have an animation to look at while we drown our sorrows in Gin

About Crossfade: Good, I simply call those fade-cuts but that may be a direct translation of a term I guess. When googling all I found for that was people getting haircuts.
Ok so we have the flip, the slide, the crossfade, the book ... anything else before doing some really sketchy mockup animations?

OMG I didn't know I wanted this until I see it here!

In my humble opinion would be nice a slide animation, like Elementary does (agree with Nuno: less intrusive), like when you change virtual desks on your Android phone (sorry for assuming all here use Android ). Maybe would be nice that for RTL language speakers that animation would go from left to right, because you know, their reading order.

Steady on, steady on. Still need to find time to do the sketch animations and then we can see all of them.

Btw say that you don't have compositing turned on? Is there a nice graphical way that "switch" could be done so you get a sense of movement or at least where you are?

Me again I don't think it makes a lot of sense to optimize for the compositing-off case, it doesn't affect most people and with wayland, which will come soon-ish hopefully, everything will always be composited anyways. So, I wouldn't waste time on that.

Plus to me the slide animation doesn't look like a job for a compisitor. The flip is a different story I guess.

Greetings!

Sry - "desktop effects" then. Whether wayland comes "soonish" and with no way to turn of heavier desktop effects is a completely different matter I think. Lets plan for it and think about it.