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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Kde3 suggestion -- alpha channel use
From:       Kuba Ober <kuba () mareimbrium ! org>
Date:       2001-10-16 18:12:41
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On Monday 15 October 2001 20:44, Austad, Jay wrote:
> I posted this to the kde3alpha list, but I think this may be a better forum
> for it:
>
> The new version of QT adds hardware accelerated alpha channel support.
> Since KDE3 will use the latest version of QT, would it be possible to place
> a slider on the title bar of every application which would allow one to
> change the whole app from 0-100% opacity?  That way, I can sit and browse
> sites with a semi-transparent konqueror, and still watch what is going on
> in windows behind it.  A mod like this would be sweet eye-candy, but also
> quite useful from a productivity standpoint (since I routinely have about
> 20 windows open, or more).
>
> Thoughts?

Here we're working with eye movements and visual perception in general. Based 
on how the vision works, and in short: a very bad idea. It will be almost 
useless - the visual clutter would be hard to manage, and to avoid clutter 
effect the transparency of the foreground window would need to be always at 
10-30%, not more and that makes the transparency almost useless.

What would work *very* well, although that is even less trivial, is to have 
"decent" transparency - say 50% for all windows, but make all non-foreground 
windows out-of-focus (ie. pass through a slight low-pass filter, like 5 point 
weighted average, or similar). That would work miracles, and I would buy a 
24-pack of decent beer of choice to anybody who does that.

Cheers,
Kuba
 
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