Re: [MiNT] Cool new AES features

[Evan Langlois <Evan@CoolRunningConcepts.com>]

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 19:28 +0200, Arnaud BERCEGEAY wrote:

> I'll give an example to illustrate what i try to explain : in MyAES, the  
> user can set an image as background instead of the desktop, and this  
> background cover the whole screen (including the background of the  
> menubar). The first time i saw it, i found it very cool and great ! I  
> immediatly started to create my how background picture to customize my  
> desktop. I was very happy USER. There is no change in the API for the  
> programmer for this particular example.

A picture for your background should be a desktop feature, not the AES.
Textures or other graphics on AES objects, such as the menubar would be
one of the things we are talking about - AES themes on GEM objects.

So, what happens to open applications when the user changes theme.  Now
we are back to the old argument.

The best way to make things better for the user, is to make things
easier on the developer.  I think making things work together easier and
provide more visual feedback (yes, eye candy) is one of those, but then
we're back to the argument of "my machine is too slow for eye candy and
so therefore, these features are nothing but bloat and they are bad".

Every OS out there (except Windows where its accepted that you get a new
computer every time a new OS comes out) has these issues.  Ask a
collection of Linux users how they feel about X's compositing extension,
and you'll find those with slower computers find it bloat, and those
with the hardware to to accelerate it like the extra visual feedback
without even noticing the CPU usage - in fact the desktop feels MORE
responsive since it doesn't have to do constant redraws as things are
moved across the screen.