Transparency is not useless. The only apps that you see that use it now are gratuituous Eterms.
When you watch sporting events on television, they broadcasters show the score (and other info) on the bottom edge of the screen. If you notice, most of the time this is translucent so that you can still watch the game. If the boxes near the bottom were opaque, you would quickly notice the difference since your view would be obstructed. The "user" of the TV would hate that!
So why do we put up with dialog boxes, and help windows that pop up, obscuring that exact thing which we need help for?
Once translucency/transparency are implemented in XFree, or WIndows, or whatever, UI designers will have a chance to fix this problem which we shrug off, since we, as long time computer users are so used to dealing with this problem.
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When you watch sporting events on television, they broadcasters show the score (and other info) on the bottom edge of the screen. If you notice, most of the time this is translucent so that you can still watch the game. If the boxes near the bottom were opaque, you would quickly notice the difference since your view would be obstructed. The "user" of the TV would hate that!
So why do we put up with dialog boxes, and help windows that pop up, obscuring that exact thing which we need help for?
Once translucency/transparency are implemented in XFree, or WIndows, or whatever, UI designers will have a chance to fix this problem which we shrug off, since we, as long time computer users are so used to dealing with this problem.