[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Test startup animations

[Gary Martin]

Hi Gonzalo,

On 5 Aug 2011, at 20:47, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:

> I have prepared a few videos to show the change in the startup animation I am proposing
> In all the videos, at the right is one XO with the patch and the left is another without the patch,
> the method to compare the times is not very scientific, but I have tried to start the activities at the same time :)
> 
> In the first test, I used alpha and scale cairo operations to modify to render only one time the icon
> you can see the zoom effect at the start and a little improvement in startup time:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE7eXjsQm_g
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHqcdsAFvgE
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4qMB4eayU4

Fab! That's a good 2 or 3 seconds shaved off activity start time, a very important metric, even given we loose the original pulse design (i.e. pulsing between grey+white & user colours provides better contrast; the monochrome to colour also suggests an activity bundle starting up and becoming a users own activity).

Are these two test machines XO-1, or XO-1.5s?

Regarding the zoom effect, it's great it is finally showing up ;-) but I wonder if the timing is different, it feels very slow/smooth/linear, is it using the same zoom maths as on previous Sugars? I'll need to have a tinker to see/check how it used to be.

> If you want test in your system, you can download http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/alpha-pulsingicon/files_animation.zip
> and copy the files in the directory pulse in the following directories:
> icon.py -> /usr/lib/python/python2.7/site-packages/sugar/graphics/
> launcher.py and pulsingicon.py -> /usr/lib/python/python2.7/site-packages/jarabe/view/
> 
> The patches are:
> http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/alpha-pulsingicon/Add-alpha-and-scale-functionality-to-the-icon-can-be-used-in-the-launcher-to-do-the-animation---v2.patch
> http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/alpha-pulsingicon/0001-Do-startup-animation-of-the-activity-icon-using-scal.patch
> 
> You can see the effect is different, and may be is not so good like the original.
> 
> I did another try using two buffers, with the different colors, and changing the alpha 
> to obtain a similar effect. The code is a lot more complex, and is a little slower obviously.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rLaE0TKZXw
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q2RliMTLRM
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHBCSnrGsjA

I do find these more visible as the grey/white stage of the pulse is guaranteed to provide some contrast even if the user has chosen a fill/stroke combination with low contrast. However, the cost seems rather high with only about 1sec launch time improvement and twice as much code to maintain.

Quick question about your second version (I couldn't quite grok my way through the patch). Are you 1) fading both the grey and the colour versions of the image so that as one becomes opaque, the other becomes transparent; or 2) drawing one in the background always as an opaque fill, and then just pulsing the other over the top from opaque to transparent? In my code (non Sugar) I find the latter choice keeps code to a minimum, is more efficient, and visually looks cleaner (avoids the white background leaking through during part of the cycle). 

Here's a quick video if I didn't describe the above effect well enough (middle is alpha fading both images, right is the simple case of a single fade in/out for comparison, and left is using the monochrome image as an opaque background fill while drawing the colour image over the top with an alpha puse):

	http://youtu.be/LLsqjGWBMfQ

Regards,
--Gary

> The patchs are:
> 
> http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/alpha-pulsingicon/0001-Add-alpha-to-icon-and-secondary-buffer-to-implement-.patch
> 
> http://dev.laptop.org/~gonzalo/alpha-pulsingicon/0001-Do-startup-animation-using-alpha-scale-and-a-seconda.patch
> 
> If you want test in one XO can use the files in the directory pulse-doublebuf in the files_animation.zip
> 
> I want include this in 0.94, thoughts? 
> 
> Gonzalo
> 
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