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Thinking About Desktop Eyecandy
An anonymous reader writes "This article ponders over whether excess eye candy and special effects being incorporated on the desktop is a good trend after all? The author explains why he thinks the users are taken for a ride by the OS companies in compelling them to upgrade their hardware in order to enable these processor intensive and memory hungry special effects."
First think i do is dumb it down and make it look as simple and old as posiable.
$>
can't beat that now can you.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
...as long as everything is configurable. The minute something becomes distracting I should be able to disable it. Forced fancy effects that do nothing but distract you and spin away CPU cycles are a waste.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
I don't mind home users buying this, but why do companies?
It bugs the hell out of me that a select licenced windows server cd comes with eye candy switched on(ok its not much but it's a server!)
why???
I think my eye has Diabetes, so I will pass on vista, and take Xgl Ligth please.
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
I played WoW for one year now on a Windows 2000 Professional box. As we all know, Windows 2000 is as about as bland a desktop that has ever existed.I was getting 90 to 100 FPS in WoW and I was happy with it.
Recently, I was forced to upgrade to Windows XP because an application bombed out when trying to install on W2K. Now, I get 30 - 40fps. After turning off all the XP eye candy, I get 40fps steady.
Actually, I do. $ (seriously.:P) ----nubis :)
OS X has loads of eye candy. The obvious benefit is that users get more feedback on their actions. This means less calls to tech support, because it is obvious to the user whether they are taking the right actions or not. For example, when a program crashes in OS X there is a spinning beachball, and when a program launches the dock icon bounces.
The hidden benefit is that much of the eye candy in OS X is very soothing. It makes it easier to get work done when you have a soothing background and your actions on the computer generate a continual calming effect. Everything from the click of the keys on my powerbook to the way programs open and close is designed to put the user into a state of flow.
A prettier GUI is often easier on the eyes, and if you have a load of extra resources (do you really need a 3ghz machine with 1 gig of ram just to browse the web?) might as well use them to make the interface more attractive. Though whats attractive to one, may not be attractive to another.
I'm all for eyecandy in my OS so long as it is in moderation. To me, that means 2 things:
1) It's not excessive. I don't need 10-second animations to show a window has popped up.
2) It's not too hardware intensive for the time it's released. Around 3 generations ago for video cards.
3) You can scale it back if needed.
For #1, it shouldn't slow things down or cause a distraction. Something cool, but subtle. OSX's dock bar is a nice example.
For #2, I mean you shouldn't need a current-gen system to render everything. If Vista came out today, I don't want to be required to have an nVidia 6800GT to view the desktop with the defaults on. If you required a Geforce 2 or 3, then fine; they've been out long enough that most should have something as good or better (plus you should be able to turn it down if you don't).
For #3, you should be able to run an OS in a lighter configuration. This is for people that either don't have recent hardware or just want a light experience for performance (or personal preference).
But building more special effects in the OS level will rob the extra power and memory from the applications and games which rightfully require them.
.. the PC I'm typing this reply on has a 2.6GHz CPU and 1Gb of RAM, with a Radeon 9800pro graphics card. That's faaaaar more than my desktop requires. If I didn't "waste" the extra capacity on delightfully shiny effects it'd just go to unused. It's not like Firefox would start using it.
.. I *like* swooshy effects. I'm a PHP developer. I need cheering up. ;)
This guy is incredibly clueless. Effects only take up "power" (argh) and memory when they're in use. The likes of OSX automatically scales down the fancy stuff if your system doesn't have the grunt to run them well, I imagine Vista will do the same. Switch of the swishy bits and your system will use no more RAM or CPU time than if they weren't there in the first place. Besides which
And further to that
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It depends - some can be quite useful. For example, the genie effect when minimizing a window in OS X shows you exactly where the window went, so you know how to get it back. That's awesome for a beginning computer user and very intuitive.
On the other hand, the water ripple effect when dropping a widget in dashboard in os X is pretty much useless. The ONLY possible way you could call this usefull is because it's an indication that you did in fact let go of the mouse button, but that's a serious stretch.
I personally find the smooth movement and eyecandy in os x to be great - sure you could make something like expose work without the eye candy, but the smooth scaling of windows makes it very easy to use and intuitive. I stare at a computer screen for a large portion of my day - I do, in fact, enjoy the fact that it's nice to look at.
Eyecandy incorporated in the proper way can in fact be useful. It can provide extra visual cues to indicate what's going on. It can help new users familiarize themselves with a system. However, for the most part, the ways it's currently being implemented are more of a distraction than a useful feature.
This guy's the limit!
Control Panels --> System --> Optimize for Best Performance
It turns off ALL the fuzzy, fading, stupid stuff, and surprises them how much better it responds.
Linux/BSD?
IceWM on top, but with KDE libs underneath, so you can run any KDE or Gnome apps, but don't need all that mem-hogging desktop candy just to run KMail or whatever.
I can beat that:
#>
Italics are quotes from the article:
But building more special effects in the OS level will rob the extra power and memory from the applications and games which rightfully require them.
I generally play games that require a lot of processing power in fullscreen mode, so the OS using fancy features for display will have very little impact (all of the OS's textures will be swapped off the GPU unless I alt-tab or otherwise task switch away from the fullscreen game). And the vast majority of applications I use just aren't going to have any significant negative impact from a bit of eyecandy. Computers are ridiculously fast these days... Word processors and web browsers have more than enough power to spare some for eye candy. There aren't too many applications for which this kind of eyecandy actually hurts performance on modern systems. Even things like, say, movie encoding or other heavy number-crunching apps aren't impacted significantly because almost all of the work in displaying the eye candy is done on the video GPU which would otherwise be unused anyway.
There are other valid reasons too which prompt me to take the viewpoint that less eye candy is better for the OS. Experience tells me that it is futile to do productive work within a desktop with all the special effects enabled. The last time, I tried it, I was severely distracted and fell short of completing my work. Is it just me or are there others who have been through the same experience ? To do productive work, it always helps to have a fully functional but spartan desktop.
I disagree here too. "Eyecandy" if used well (see MacOS X for some examples) can give subtle cues that actually make me more productive. This part is clearly subjective so YMMV.
But the Windows users do not have this luxury. For example, a person using Windows 2000 will be forced to buy a copy of Vista if he needs the added security and extra features like better search. And to install Vista on his computer, he will most certainly have to embark on a spending spree to upgrade his PC to accomodate the extra special effects that are integrated into the OS
The guy who wrote this should have done some research. You can run Vista without the Aero Glass UI being active, just as Windows XP can be dumbed down to look, feel, act and perform like Windows 2000 (except with much faster booting times).
If you don't want the eyecandy, shut it off. You CAN do this in Windows XP and Vista, despite what the misinformed article states.
I really disagree with the article. Computer interfaces should look good and be efficient. GUI's will always push the envelop of whatever technologies come around. If OS and software vendors aren't pushing the envelope, then they aren't working hard enough at improvement. Who cares about your lame 486's, anyway?
The author then makes the claim that nice interfaces rob the computer of processing power. I disagree. Most of the time the computer (especially desktop) is doing nothing. In anycase, if what I understand is true, upcoming MS windows and some future X implememntations will use hardware acceleration for rendering window graphics-- so, the CPU won't be under any "strain" at all.
Anyways, I paid my dues with the vt100 era. It is now a pleasure to use a nice interface. I would not have it any other way.
Just like the fact people like to decorate their slave boxes... Err... I mean cubicles, people actually like working with fancy high-tech OS technology that they see like the ones in the movies. The affect might wear off after 2,000 hours at working the same dead end job day in and day out, but if it feels like you are on the deck of the enteprise while doing Excel spreadsheets you might feel better about coming into work on time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
A certain amount of eye candy can make things more pleasant, though. I used twm for years, but now I use enlightenment, because it gives me the simple, uncluttered design that twm does, but has nice shading and other visual effects that make the whole experience more pleasant.
I like uncluttered and simple, but I also like a polished look. I don't use the window switching bar thingy on the top (it wasn't even turned on by default in the version I have now), and the only icons I have on my desktop is a single row of virtual desktops along the bottom edge. Simple, elegant, and lots of uncluttered screen real estate.
"For example, a person using Windows 2000 will be forced to buy a copy of Vista if he needs the added security and extra features like better search. And to install Vista on his computer, he will most certainly have to embark on a spending spree to upgrade his PC to accomodate the extra special effects that are integrated into the OS."
Apparently, the author failed to notice that Vista has the option of the running classic interface, the XP interface, or the new Aero (ie: processor intencive) interface. So while a 2k user may want to buy a copy of Vista for security concerns, they should not have to upgrade their hardware in order to do so.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I've been testing the next release of the "unnamed proprietary operating system" in question, and I have to say that a great deal of the eye candy goes a long way to making things easier. Getting a live preview of a window if you hover over its taskbar button or flip between windows is a nice feature, as I constantly have a ton of windows open in the same app. Being able to move a window around without spiking the CPU to 60%+ is another subtle but nice benefit. In my testing of this release I've found that the UI is more responsive and smooth when the compositor is active versus when I have it switched off. This is on a 945 chipset's integrated graphics, too - you don't need a GeForce 7800GTXOMGBBQ in order to run the new UI smoothly.
That's why there's fluxbox
Is eyecandy really necessary?
Depends on the person. Some people like beauty, some people like function, some people (such as myself) like both.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
It would appear that eye candy is a necessity, but only with the idea that there are different levels of eye candy, that the eye candy can easily be made to go away/less sweetening, and that it will work well with an average hardware base.
/.er might be, there is something to be said about design and usability. How else would you explain the popularity of the iPod? Otherwise we'd all be driving one of these around.
That last idea would be the difficult to figure out. However, how much is decided by the user when they see screenshots, what is the coolness factor when icons appear to be crystal/brushed aluminum/iridecent blue/etc? How great is it when windows will shuffle like pages in a book, or are transparent?
No matter how pragmatic the average
Of course my latest and greatest hardware is circa 2001, I don't know what people consider hardware hogs to be. I can still run BF2 on my PIII 1.4.
First, let's all just admit that out GPUs are sitting mostly idle 96% of the time. This is not simply a question of CPU cycles anymore, like it used to be.
Second, lets admit that when you refer to 'eye candy', you are framing the quesiton as a perjorative. It strongly implies that what you are talking about has already been judged as useless decoration.
Good design follows function, as the saying goes. Examples of "good" eye candy - the Dock in OS X's genie effect. Its fast, it tells you where your minimized document is living, and it can be turned off (to straight scaling). Nothing wrong with this at all. Where developers go wrong is usually in two areas. One, developers are not designers. Developers write code, and should not attempt serious design, any more than the Photoshop and Illustrator jockeys should attempt C++. Second, picking an appropriate bit of eye candy should always follow an already identified need. This is the form-follows-function. Animation always draws the eye, it should not be misused to redirect your attention where it is not needed. Here's a great example: pull-down menus in Mac OS X vs the same in Windows XP. On the Mac, pulldowns appear instantly, and fade away once something is selected; this is correct behaviour, as you asked for a menu - there should be no delay. Fading away is fine because the selection has been made, and you have moved on. In XP, the menus fade up, and vanish instantly - totally backwards. That is bad eye candy.
In the end it is always a question of design. Eye candy by itself is nothing, no value judgement can be rendered.. it is the application. So the way this article is framed is mostly useless for purposes of deciding when and where to employ such effects.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I always put my Windows box to "Classic" mode in short order.
To me, UIs aren't "interesting" so I like to keep them as minimally distracting as possible. The less time it takes for my brain to say "this is a pushbutton" the better off I am.
I've found that younger people are a bit less conservative about this stuff, and seem to embrace funky looking buttons faster.
So I'm just turning into an old fogey...
Some of the effects though...like making dropdown menus scroll down or fade in just take time. I understand how a total n00b might be impressed or even appreciate the connection (being less "jarring" than something just popping up) but it seems like a large cumulative time waiting for menus to open.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I completely agree. Also, looking at my iMac CoreDuo CPU monitor, there's not even a blink up in CPU time while doing these operations. My PowerBook G4 400Mhz works better and better with each MacOS X revision, so I guess Eye Candy isn't what is slowing it down ;)
Menzoberranzan Networks
Man, those long-hairs in the 60's could delete information so much more efficiently. I'm totally jealous.
I am a Linux user myself at home, and trying to get it worked into the corporate strategy, but I can guarantee you that they weren't "more productive" when each application required reconfiguring for specific hardware, you had slower communications, and no graphical capabilities. No GUI is great for filling out forms with text, but for other office-style tasks, it's much harder for the average user.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"Tis better to remain silent and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
I know, I've read on several sites now that the fanciest of the UI effects will only be available if the machine meets the requirements, and that the effects and general UI look and feel has many many steps down it can take in the event that the hardware of the current machine doesnt meet the specifications needed.
Chances are the server OS is based on most of the same technologies, would these people assume that you need a GeForce 7800 GTX in your server just because it runs Vista Server?
I can see it now, a Terminal Server with a Athlon FX-60, 500 gig hard drive, SLI GeForce 7800 GTX's...
Come on you GUI Nazi's get over it, technology evolves, plain moves to pretty, it's been happening for decades now. If your hardware doesn't support it, make it look like windows 95 (or redhat 6 if that floats your boat instead). Not everybody uses their computer with bread and water type work nessesity only. Some of us are into computers because we're enthusiasts, and we like to have lots of UI candy, and we don't give a shit if it takes 24 pixel pipelines to get there, cause we've got em.
Isnt is funny how the people who want and will enjoy a fancy accelerated UI are the same people who will have hardware to run it, and all the folks bashing it and saying it't not nessesary are the ones that are going to get the "windows is laughing at you message" during install that probably will verbatim say ""Microsoft Windows has detected that you are using a legacy video accelerator device. Enhanced display options will not be available at this time.""
Queue the Simpsons bully laugh "Haa-ha!"
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Pshaw... having just moved from a Win2K box to a Powerbook, I don't find that the shiny shiny stuff makes a difference in my life.
Some of it, like the animation that swooshes the dock, just irritiates me.
I personally find the PB keyboard annoying compared to my Logitech, and the mouse button on the trackpad - man was that designed by a deaf person? CLICK! CLICK!
I would love to be able to turn off even more of this flashola than I have already. I don't need my windows to swoosh down to an icon, or for every third item to start bouncing.
I dunno, maybe Mac folks are just easily amused, or I need to ingest more mushrooms.
Oooh - that's it... mushrooms!
Three Squirrels
...you made a good point, that eye candy is ok, provided that it can be turned off. However, you may not realize that isn't always that simple.
.dlls supported, one for providing a 3d based desktop, and another for providing a 2d desktop.
Let's take a hypethetical situation. Lets say I write a UI that uses a 3d api to render the desktop. (we will call this supposed UI, 'SparrowGrass' so we have a name to work with.)
Using 'SparrowGrass' I can enable all sorts of 'spiffy-wa'(as my console gamer friend calls them) hardware accelerated effects, such as dynamic shadows, translucency, and such. But because they are expecting that there is a 3d card with a good T&L chip in the machine, it will run like a dog without it.
So either because I find such 'spiffy-wa' effects morally offensive when I am trying to remotely reconfigure a DC, or because I lack the latest 3d card, I choose to disable the fancy 3d features of 'SparrowGrass'. However, I am still using a 3d API to render the desktop.
If you looks at one very famous company's 3d API, printing text to the screen involves rendering a couple of polygons, and basically texture mapping the text onto them. While you have turned off the 'spiffy-wa' features, you are still going to be taking a hit for using the 3d API in the first place.
it seems unlikely that there will be two sets of
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
While certainly, many of the "gee whiz" demo's we see of the eye candy are largely useless, and could even be considered a detriment to productivity, there are a number of more subtle side-effects of this eye candy which are and can be very useful and a benefit to productivity.
A good example is the window shadows in OS X. These are created through compositing, which is part of the "eye candy" layer. The drop shadows help define the edge of the window without having to have a thick and useless window border. OS X windows are borderless, which improves screen usage, and the shadows allow you to clearly define the edge.
Another example is Expose. This is handled by the compositing system as well, to resize, scale, and reposition the windows
Translucency is another benefit in certain areas, such as with overlays.
While all these things can be done without a fancy eye candy layer or 3D acceleration, they suck up CPU power. We'll eventually see the 'gee whiz' stuff go away, but the real productivity boosts will stick around.
Also, there's the argument that "Hey, i have all this power, why should I just let it go to waste doing nothing" has some merit as well.
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Linux offers choice in GUIs, but so will Vista (as did XP). What would be really slick is a single, consistent GUI that doesn't remind one of Windows 3.1 or Fisher Price but still runs smoothly, auto-downsizing effects if the system can't handle it. OS X has that, I question whether any OS will ever achieve that though.
Adding an image. Perhaps even an image that tells me something about the contents of the window could be considered eyecandy OR and extra clue. Was it gnome that colored the entire desktop red if you ran as root? Eyecandy or vital visual feedback?
Stricly speaking everything not in X is eyecandy. Run solaris on a xerox printer machine and you will get the bare basics of a window manager and yes it does everything it needs to but gee gods it is hard on the eyes.
So where do you draw the line?
Personally I liked Enlightenment but now run XFCE4 wich suggests that while I like a pretty picture I don't want it to get in the way of business. KDE 3.* is nice and all but gee gods it loves the animations. Gnome is too inflexible for me.
Give me candy but don't slow me down. No animations. INSTANT popups/slides/whatever.
Then again I do usually have gkrellm open. Lots of flashy blinky shiny thingys. But they don't slow me down and while they are eyecandy also tell me someting about my computer. Since I am on old hardware wich I tend to try to do things it isn't designed for I "use" the gkrellm eyecandy to tell me if I can expect a freeze to happen or when gentoos emerge is about to fill its HD space again.
So usefull eyecandy?
As for pure eyecandy effects like the holy grail of true transparancy. Well. My terminals are semi transparant and I would have it anyother way as I think (just my opinion) that it is easier on the eyes then a monochrome background. True transparancy would perhaps look even nicer and if it was as smooth as a FPS then all the better.
Yes off course it doesn't really matter and I would hardly use a bad terminal emulator over a good one just for the sake of transparancy BUT if two terms are equal is the one that lets you choose your type of background better?
Is the windows manager that then allows your term emulator to offer you transparancy then better for it? Etc all the way down to the kernel.
I personally don't like eyecandy that steals window space OR takes time but I do like eyecandy that makes the desktop less endless grey slabs of unused space.
Should the OS/window manager developers care about eyecandy? Well that is the beauty of OSS isn't it? Use pure X if you hate all eyecandy or use any of the window managers if you want more.
A bit of sugar makes the medicine go down. Yes the medicine still needs to be good but sugar helps.
Will windows new 3d desktop rendering be a good or a bad thing? Well, there was a recent discussion about offloading physics in games onto the gpu. That would help run the game a lot faster. Ages ago, long before GPU's, some video cards started offering windows acceleration wich supposedly helped offload some of the desktop rendering from the CPU onto the vidcard.
It makes sense in a way. If you can save the CPU a boring task then it can spend its cycles on more meaningfull things. I do know for a fact that a true dual CPU machine has a lot less waiting for redraws then a single cpu machine. Would a single CPU machine with GPU desktop rendering be just as responsive? Surely that can't be bad.
In a way I don't see the problem that the author has with it. Sure sure, windows users who want vista "security" (see a few articles below about IE7 for vista and how secure it is) need to upgrade and pay for the eyecandy but that is MS business model. They got more money some some countries so it works. Anyway I am fairly sure MS allows people to turn off all the candy they don't want.
Ultimately the candy has little to do with the underlying OS. How a widget is drawn has
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I would but I can't shop photos or model solids in DOS...
Collector's Edition
I'm not typical in that I try to do as little customization as possible. Sometimes I have to change stuff (.vimrc, for example) but mostly I'd rather just adapt to the defaults.
There are exceptions, of course: most of the eye candy in XP is actively obnoxious, and making XP look as much as possible like 2K is the first thing I do when installing it. OSX (perhaps because its main design goal was not just to jam in as many features as possible) is much pleasanter to look at. I need very little customization on OSX, mostly getting rid of that !@#$ minimize-to-the-dock "feature."
Linux does strike a good balance: it's much easier to turn stuff off. On the other hand, I prefer Gnome largely because it has so many less stinking options to wade through.
In short, you'll never please everybody.
Microsoft makes a lot of its money selling to computer manufacturers. They want customers to be forced to buy new computers.
This has NOTHING to do with doing the right thing for customers, in my opinion.
Because they want to use it for worthy causes (SETI, folding, etc)? Because due to the bloat of modern PCs you can barely get word processing and an mp3 player to work on 256 MB of RAM? Because you'd rather let the processor idle part of the time and use less power?
Not to mention- I find eye candy to be universally ugly. Simple is beautiful. The fewer bells and whistles the nicer everything looks.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I dont know about you, but my laptop's battery life drops drasticly when the GPU is used, plus the CPU runs at 600 mhz all the time. So I seriously doubt a laptop will run vista good on battery power. But plug it in? Blazing.
Don't blame the companies - blame people for only buying what superficially looks good.
And while you are blaming people, also blame all the hot women for going for all the Joe Sixpacks who only superficially look good... Real Men sit in their parents' basement!
Ratpoison.
If you think about it, everything is focusing far more on graphics and eyecandy than ever before. Films concentrate less on plot and just go for over-the-top special effects, even everyday objects go for looks over useability. People seem to be so obsessed with something looking nice that they don't think to find out if it's actually any good or not.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
A lot of what people call "Eye Candy" in XGL, are actual usability improvements. For example:
The cube. While the fastest way to switch virtual desktops is to hide all the current windows and show the windows in the other virtual desktop, the feedback is so little that to the new user it looks like the applications crashed. Rotating a cube makes it really obvious that your windows are still alive but just in another place. And makes it obvious how to get them back (rotate the cube the oposite way)
Drop shadows. Allows the borders to be smaller, and thus increase usable space, while still mantaining a visual clue as to the limits of the window. It also helps the brain identify what window is on top.
Animated minimization. The fastest way to minimize a window is to just hide it. However, visually it looks virtually identical to closing the window. By shrinking the window smoothly into the task bar, it is obvious the relationship between the minimized task bar icon and the window and it lets your brain quickly identify where the window went.
Expose like feature. This one is really obvious, it helps you find windows very quickly, by picture, not by just the text in the task bar.
Some of it though is hard to justify, for example there is no apparent usability improvement from the wiggly windows (someone please correct me), but given that is completelly optional, and it can be done by the video card withought really affecting the CPU, I fail to see the harm of it.
My idea of a good desktop interface is one that doesn't slow me down. There are two kinds of eye candy, static and dynamic. Static eye candy in the form of a visually appealing interface that is simple, elegant, and ergonomic is good. Dynamic eye candy in the form of visual effects tend to be bad.
Bad Eye candy:
Example 1, fading menus: The default configuration of Windows XP features menus that fade in and out. Right click on the desktop of a fresh install of XP and you'll see what I mean. This is bad. Why? Because the rendering that is being done takes TIME. It slows down the user who has to wait for it to render. Admittedly it is only a few tenths of a second, but when you're a grand master hacker (!cracker) a few tenths of a second do make a difference. I always turn this 'feature' off.
Example 2, window animation: Gnome has a very annoying "feature" where it animates the resizing of windows. Minimize a window and gnome draws a series of progressively smaller outline boxes on the screen tracing the minimization of the window. I'm not sure what use this is supposed to be. I do know that it slows me down. When I do something it should be as instantaneous as possible. KDE has the same "feature" but unlike Gnome it can be disabled. There are problems that I have with Gnome and the inability to turn off the bothersome BS (of which this is but one example) is a big one.
Good Eye Candy:
Example 1, Bouncing icons: Recent versions of KDE include what I call icon bouncing. When you double click on an icon to open a file or start a program, a miniaturized bouncing version of that icon appears next to the mouse pointer. The reason that this is not bad is because if I've double clicked on something I expect for there to be a lag while the program or file opens. The bouncing cursor does not slow me down. The reason it is good is because it lets me know that the program or file is actually trying to open. There are times when you double click on something and it doesn't quite register that you've done so. Without the bouncing cursor you might sit there for several seconds waiting for something to happen before realizing that it isn't going to. With the bouncing cursor you know immediately whether or not the system has registered your request or not.
Example 2, Icon highlighting: Both Gnome and KDE feature icon highlighting. Whenever the mouse pointer is over an icon, it changes color. This is not bad because it does not slow you down. It is good because it gives that extra little bit of feeback to the user and creates a more interactive environment.
In short user interfaces should be as efficient as they possibly can be. Eye candy that increases efficiency or improves aesthetics without reducing efficiency are good. Eye candy that reduces efficiency is bad, even if it arguably makes the interface more aesthetically pleasing.
Now I realize that some people demand special effects and other such things. There is no reason why they cannot be accommodated. But at the same time the user MUST be able to turn any and all effects OFF. Furthremore I would argue that there should be a simple configuration tool that will provide both fine grained control of the effects as well as a set of general effects level settings (max, medium, low, off) to allow users to quickly set the level of eye candy they have to endure.
I understand that Microsoft is adding in all sorts of eye candy to vista and that this is the primary reason why they recommend you have a Nvidia 12800^e24 super ninja turbo card with vertex dimpling and pixel shader 15 to run it. I have not seen vista yet, but I suspect that this is a grave mistake and that most experienced users will turn most or all of these new fangled 'features' OFF. I know I will.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Sometimes I like it. I just run xterms or emacs all the time, with the windows stretched to take up the whole display. If I'm in the mood for eyecandy I add -F or even --color to my ls arguments....but generally I don't think it's worth the effort.
YMMV.