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Menu Shadows in GTK2
unmadindu noted that there is a now a gtk shadow patch which does what it says for GTK2 applications. You can see a screenshot, or another or yet another. And if you're lazy, here are some RPMs with the patch. One more piece of eye candy to brighten up your weekend.
If this was a post about Windows getting shadows, there'd be dozens of posts listing the zillion OSes that already have shadows and bitching about Microsoft's lack of innovation.
When GTK2 gets it, it's cool.
Such is life.
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Shadows provide a visual clue that should speed up the users analysis of what's happening on the desktop. This isn't earth shattering news but is an improvement.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
My experience with shadow dropping menus is that the overall usuabily and visual quality degenerates. The underlying text structures are worse to read and after 16 hours in front of the screen your eyes start to hurt. And it seems to me that it reduces the menu contrast, which I personally don't like, too.
It's rather strange that people always want to add this feature. In real live you wouldn't read a news paper in blinding sunlight just to see the pages drop a shadow, would you ?
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
The point is that the alternative isn't the same - it's not proprietary, it's source is open, there are no licensing fees, the community spirit of the developers is reflected in 98% of all software developed for it (iow, it's also open and free). There is an alternative, and it is better.
Even if there was a 100% compatible open sourced version of WindowsXP that had no licensing cost, which would you use? Now imagine if the "freeXP" had no anti-aliasing, onlyh ran in 8-bit color mode, and looked like Windows 3.1, would you still rather use that than the real McCoy? Emulation of an already successful product is not a bad thing, in many ways GTK has already surpassed MFC, now they are filling in the holes.
To some people, "alternative" means:
not spending their money for Microsoft,
not being vulnerable to viruses made for the mainstream platform,
has source code available so you can tinker or learn,
has public bug reporting so bugs you discover have a chance at being fixed,
experiment more openly with Human-Computer Interface concepts.
Some people like the look and feel of XP (though I don't). Some people like the product but despise the creator. Some people want to recreate effects they've seen in code, because they wonder if they can reverse-engineer it accurately.
I saw this and wondered, "what if the mouse pointer were the light source for GUI shadows hanging off menus and window frames; would it be horribly distracting or helpful for tracking the mouse pointer intuitively?" I value experimentation over one-size-fits-all, so that's one reason I choose Linux.
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