UI Animations
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Animations in normal everyday UI (I am not talking about games here) (especially in the WPF world) are becoming more and more popular. Among the popular web sites and applications, can you come up with 1 example where, according to you, animations are good, meaningful (done right) and 1 example where, you think, the designer added animations for the sake of animations.
The little animation that the disclosure arrow does (or used to do) when you expand it on some systems (OS X). That's kind of useful, and subtle - you don't notice it till it's not there.
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First example that comes to mind for good animation: the little fade-out thing that Outlook "toast" notifications do. Lets me know the notification is going away, but still lets me click it (and fades back in to indicate that as soon as i mouseover). Runner up: those little yellow highlights on web pages that let you know something has been updated and then quietly fade out. Bad... Fading in/out menus. Utterly worthless - fails to provide additional context or functionality. Runner up: the slide-out effect in Visual Studio panels - can't stop it, must wait for it to complete before re-opening the panel. I'll probably think of something else, but IMHO the hallmark of a useful animation is that it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - it mimicks the behavior of a physical object in motion, giving you hints to how it is changing or to the ways in which you can interact with it.
Shog9 wrote:
slide-out effect in Visual Studio panels - can't stop it
Tools -> Options -> Environment -> General -> Animate Environment Tools. What was so hard in that, on the first page for Pete's sake! :rolleyes:
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
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Shog9 wrote:
slide-out effect in Visual Studio panels - can't stop it
Tools -> Options -> Environment -> General -> Animate Environment Tools. What was so hard in that, on the first page for Pete's sake! :rolleyes:
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
Ed.Poore wrote:
on the first page for Pete's sake!
You called?
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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Animations in normal everyday UI (I am not talking about games here) (especially in the WPF world) are becoming more and more popular. Among the popular web sites and applications, can you come up with 1 example where, according to you, animations are good, meaningful (done right) and 1 example where, you think, the designer added animations for the sake of animations.
Good: How the .Net (Winforms) calendar control is rendered under Vista*... it zooms in and out very nicely. First time I saw it doing this I thought "nice". *I say under Vista - it may do this under XP, but in my XP VM it doesn't, it has the old school month menu and no zooming. Bad: eBay. There's lots of craptastic things on eBay at the moment, but my biggest gripes are the way they chosen to bodge ajaxy style things where a standard screen refresh would be more than acceptable, and not bothered with ajaxy stuff where partial updates could be useful. For example, sorting listings (by price, date, etc.) produces this nasty grey box fade out while a partial refresh goes on, whereas a number of tab pages on the site force a full page refresh.
print "http://www.codeproject.com".toURL().text Ain't that Groovy?
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Shog9 wrote:
slide-out effect in Visual Studio panels - can't stop it
Tools -> Options -> Environment -> General -> Animate Environment Tools. What was so hard in that, on the first page for Pete's sake! :rolleyes:
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
No, i meant, you can't interrupt the animation while it's animating... but now that i've written that, i see that you can (provided it's set to be slow enough). I think what threw me is the pause before the animation starts - if it animates fast enough, by the time i move my cursor back over the button it'll have closed already, requiring a delay before it re-opens. Set to be much, much slower now...
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No, i meant, you can't interrupt the animation while it's animating... but now that i've written that, i see that you can (provided it's set to be slow enough). I think what threw me is the pause before the animation starts - if it animates fast enough, by the time i move my cursor back over the button it'll have closed already, requiring a delay before it re-opens. Set to be much, much slower now...
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Ed.Poore wrote:
on the first page for Pete's sake!
You called?
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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Yeah, how was your break ;P
I doubt it. If it isn't intuitive then we need to fix it. - Chris Maunder
Twas good. Very relaxing and I managed to get some sun, so that was good. More importantly, the family had a great time.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
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Animations in normal everyday UI (I am not talking about games here) (especially in the WPF world) are becoming more and more popular. Among the popular web sites and applications, can you come up with 1 example where, according to you, animations are good, meaningful (done right) and 1 example where, you think, the designer added animations for the sake of animations.
Here's one I hate: http://www.guiffy.com/[^] (Hover the mouse over the menus.) (Don't like the product much either; vastly prefer Beyond Compare.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Twas good. Very relaxing and I managed to get some sun, so that was good. More importantly, the family had a great time.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith
As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
Yes, but when is the next reunion?
The world is a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. —Sean O’Casey, Playwright
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Animations in normal everyday UI (I am not talking about games here) (especially in the WPF world) are becoming more and more popular. Among the popular web sites and applications, can you come up with 1 example where, according to you, animations are good, meaningful (done right) and 1 example where, you think, the designer added animations for the sake of animations.
There's this program called DIA..... :P
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "I am new to programming world. I have been learning c# for about past four weeks. I am quite acquainted with the fundamentals of c#. Now I have to work on a project which converts given flat files to XML using the XML serialization method" - SK64 ( but the forums have stuff like this posted every day )
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Bad. Any website where the sodding designer decided to use the marquee tag or the Java snow animation.
Only do this if you have a midi playing You Light Up My Life in the background.
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Animations in normal everyday UI (I am not talking about games here) (especially in the WPF world) are becoming more and more popular. Among the popular web sites and applications, can you come up with 1 example where, according to you, animations are good, meaningful (done right) and 1 example where, you think, the designer added animations for the sake of animations.
Good: re-ordering tabs via drag & drop in Google Chrome. The animation makes is quick and gives the feeling of non-jarring and smooth action, showing the user what just happened. The animation makes it very clear what's going on. Bad: The Visual Studio hide/show sidebars. They're slow choppy animations. They get in the way and generally aren't useful.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
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H'mmm, Woodgrove says, with little in the way of animation, indeed somewhat wooden even
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Awesome application
Regards, Thomas Stockwell Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. Visit my Blog
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LOL - I have a client who sells ice melting stuff. There are falling snow flakes. They were requested - and I think they fit actually (where most sites don't) I've never been sodding before... It's not so bad ... Sodding... LOL Sodding Snow (ROFL)
Know way to many languages... master of none!
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Here's one I hate: http://www.guiffy.com/[^] (Hover the mouse over the menus.) (Don't like the product much either; vastly prefer Beyond Compare.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
That animation (to me) isn't that bad - but it doesn't really 'add' anything to the page either. I like those instantaneous menus... so I don't get slowed down... (Not that this one you showed us is THAT slow or anything - just my opinion...) I prefer SNAPPY & fast.
Know way to many languages... master of none!
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Good: How the .Net (Winforms) calendar control is rendered under Vista*... it zooms in and out very nicely. First time I saw it doing this I thought "nice". *I say under Vista - it may do this under XP, but in my XP VM it doesn't, it has the old school month menu and no zooming. Bad: eBay. There's lots of craptastic things on eBay at the moment, but my biggest gripes are the way they chosen to bodge ajaxy style things where a standard screen refresh would be more than acceptable, and not bothered with ajaxy stuff where partial updates could be useful. For example, sorting listings (by price, date, etc.) produces this nasty grey box fade out while a partial refresh goes on, whereas a number of tab pages on the site force a full page refresh.
print "http://www.codeproject.com".toURL().text Ain't that Groovy?
I agree - the calendars look nice - but "old school" works for me on software period - it's lighter, smaller foot print, does the job, move on. (Just my opinion).. Now I'm into video games too - and I like everything new under the sun in those.
Know way to many languages... master of none!
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Good: re-ordering tabs via drag & drop in Google Chrome. The animation makes is quick and gives the feeling of non-jarring and smooth action, showing the user what just happened. The animation makes it very clear what's going on. Bad: The Visual Studio hide/show sidebars. They're slow choppy animations. They get in the way and generally aren't useful.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
Nice point - if the animation helps aleviate the need for documentation - and simplifies learning by "demonstrating" what happened or "is" happening, then I see that as a value addition and worth it.
Know way to many languages... master of none!
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Bad. Any website where the sodding designer decided to use the marquee tag or the Java snow animation.
Only do this if you have a midi playing You Light Up My Life in the background.