CompizDefaults
Compiz Defaults Review for Lucid
Rationale
Default Compiz settings need to be evaluated for:
- Appearance; consistency with Ubuntu's default Look and Feel
- Behavior; consistent, discoverable keyboard shortcuts.
- Performance; disable resource-intensive or unused functionality.
Objectives
Visual Consistency with Theme
Window Switcher
- Behavior
- Appearance
Launchpad bug: Improve window switcher by not showing it for instant switches & showing only the selected window
Window Resize
- Appearance of resize hint (border color, fill color).
Make resize appearance consistent with Ubuntu's look-and-feel
Viewport Switch Preview
Review colors, sizing, border treatment.
Launchpad bug: Ensure that Viewport switcher appearance matches the look and feel of the default theme(s)
Window Shadows
Coherent Keybindings
- Can we consolidate window movement shortcuts (i.e. Expo, Scale, Show Desktop) on some other modifier key (combination).
Proposal: Change "Show Desktop" from Ctrl+Alt+D to Super+D.
- Scale = Super+W
Compiz Accessibility Proposal: People who uses keyboard navigation (like blind users) will find that compiz keybindings conflicts with gnome defaults. For instance the application switcher keybindings is an example of such conflicts bug 507964.
Increase Awareness of Useful Features
Scale
- Default keybinding is extremely difficult to discover.
Expo
Maintain Super+E keybinding.
- Change inactive viewport brightness from 75% to 100%.
Review reflection colors.
Launchpad bug: Ensure that Expo is clean, fast, and usable
Show Desktop
- Behavior is advanced/confusing. Avoid.
Evaluate Use of Workspaces
Currently, Ubuntu Desktop provides two workspaces (2 columns, 1 row). This introduces an overhead of confusion around the concept of workspace while providing the smallest marginal benefit of only one additional workspace. For Lucid, if we continue to support Workspaces, we should increase the default number of workspaces to four, either in a 1x4 array, or a 2x2 array.
Consider:
- Number and arrangement of workspaces.
- Appearance of switcher preview.
- Behavior of window switcher with respect to workspaces
2 rows, 2 columns
- Poor use of space within workspace switcher in bottom panel.
- Good use of space in Expo mode.
Improve Animations
- Increase speeds in general to make system feel more responsive
- Remove extraneous effects
Launchpad bug: Fine-tune window animations to be clean, quick, and consistent
Other Improvements
Decrease window snapping strength
Disable Focus Stealing Prevention
Allow Resetting to Defaults
Resetting to Defaults on Upgrade
What is the upgrade experience? Do we backup the user's Compiz settings and replace them with new settings?
Tear-down Beautification
- low-hanging fruit for improving the logout (of desktop-session) experience is to make compiz (if used as wm) be the last process to be quit, this prevents the sudden visual break of seeing a non-composited desktop when compiz is quit while other apps-windows are still open
User Input
Here users can suggest different animations and settings that would improve the desktop experience.
- Focus Animation: Dodge (500ms) - try it! It's easier to keep track of where your windows are with this on.
Lucid/CompizDefaults (last edited 2010-02-12 02:10:03 by lawn-128-61-19-179)