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Version 1.0.2 Please could we have a preference flag for the animation when different headings in the palette toolbar are selected (the "exploding" effect). I find it distracting. If the palette is a common UI control, perhaps this should be a global setting. For bonus points, make it default to choosing the same on/off state as the visual effects settings. To find it under MS-Windows, right-click the desktop, select the effects tab, and unclick "use transition effects for menus and tooltips".
Not sure that I fully understan the issue, Randy, do you?
Sorry, additional explanation: The palette toolbar thingy displays the various GUI components/containers that can be dropped into the visual editor. When a heading is clicked (e.g. "Swing Containers") there is an effect where the current set of components is removed and the new set displays. This "appears" to be using some kind of animation effect i.e. the new components "slide" into view. Perhaps I am mistaken and there is no animation present, and it is simply that there is a redraw happening between the addition/removal of each UI element in the palette? In which case, the redraw should simply be delayed until the completion of the UI state change. Further information: - the palette is set to use "details" layout. - this is a fast PC (3GHz P4, 512M RAM)
Yes, there is an animation in the GEF palette. We do this not only because it is cool, but because we allow multiple drawers to be open instead of just one. In one mode we will select the least recently opened drawer and close it if doing so avoid scrollbars inside the drawer being opened. If the transition were not animated, it would be very disorienting to see multiple drawer heading just jump. There are similar animations in Visual Studio, and in Explorer's "common tasks" sidebar which is selection-sensitive.
Fair enough, but "power users" like myself prefer raw speed to animation effects - my general rule for any application action is "If I can see it happening, it is too slow". Which is why all of the animations on my dev machine are always turned off. I accept that I'm in the minority, so if you mark this bug as "later", I may just get around to fixing it myself :-) If that is the case, please intend the preferred location for the preference setting so I don't waste too much time i.e. one of {"use a system property", "workspace", "visual editor", "some_other_place"}. Thanks.
If you wanted to patch it yourself, you could just change the animation time in milliseconds, or completely avoid it. See DrawerAnimationController in the GEF plug-in.
You can change the palette settings to never automatically close drawers (right-click on the palette, and select Settings to bring up the settings dialog). The drawers will still animate when expanding/collapsing, but perhaps it will remove the "exploding effect" that you notice on your computer and won't find it as distracting.
not for 3.1
In 3.1M5 I see there is a Preferences->General->Appearance->Enable Animations switch, which is what I would expect to disable this kind of animation.
That's great, I didn't know about this workbench setting. Would you like to provide a patch?
Will see what I can do, might take a couple of weeks.
Created attachment 20107 [details] Proposed patch Note that I also make some methods private, since they were not being referenced externally.
reopen for 3.2
I think I could try to provide a patch for this. To be shure that I understand everything well: If the option Preferences->General->Appearance->Enable Animations is unselected then the animation in the palette should be disabled, yes?. Did the patch for Eclipse 3.1 work?
It worked when I submitted it :-)
Then I will try to find out why it isn't working any more.
In 3.2, animation was added as a new function to draw2d. The GEF palette was refactored to use the new draw2d's animation. So, you should probably submit a patch that disabled all draw2d animations based on the workbench setting. Note that draw2d does not pre-req the workbench, so the GEF plugin would have to push the workbench preference into draw2d.
You mean that in GEF plugin I have to get the preferences about the animation from the workbench and push it to draw2d, yes? But could you gie me a hint where would be the best place to do this?
Created attachment 56961 [details] Proposed patch I've managed to do the patch that solves the problem. Please verify this.
It is somewhat ironic that James and myself were discussing this issue an hour ago. GEF is supposed to make use of a preference to disable animation.
The patch is using IWorkbenchPreferenceConstants.ENABLE_ANIMATIONS I do not think James was doing this in GMF. We need to reconcile this issue so we are all using the same preference (I think). I am moving this to M7, I do not think James will have a chance to look into this issue next week, likely for M7.
Created attachment 162883 [details] First attempt - animations disabled.
Created attachment 162884 [details] First attempt - animations enabled.
I attached two screenshots of what Anthony and I were initially thinking of doing. However, it seems that there really would not be any need to introduce a new variable but rather, use IWorkbenchPreferenceConstants.ENABLE_ANIMATIONS instead.
We released 3.6 M7 today so moving unresolved bugs to 3.6 RC1. We need to re-access if we can complete these for Helios.
James was going to make a contribution here, but it never happened. Moving off the RC1 target milestone.
(In reply to comment #25) > James was going to make a contribution here, but it never happened. Moving off > the RC1 target milestone. The final decision was to simply reuse the existing flag - which is what is being used currently. There is therefore no contribution to be made by me.
Unset target milestone as the specified one is already passed.
