Niri 0.1.8 Compositor Implements Gradient Borders, Output Management Protocol

[schmidtbag]

Nuc!eoN royce
Seeing as Phoronix is the internet HQ of armchair experts, it should be no surprise that some people here look at aesthetics as if they're objective. There's a lot of people here who hate on or refuse to use a DE (or even a distro...) because of the default theme, as though for some weird reason they're too lazy to change that, despite having the patience to use Linux. You don't have to like unicorn vomit (I don't particularly care for it but I get the appeal) but to each their own - I see why you'd want this.

I also think there's a practical use to animated window borders - you could have them change color based on system resource consumption. So for example, maybe it turns blue when idle, and then fades green to red based on CPU or RAM utilization. It could be a non-intrusive way to monitor which foreground task is being particularly demanding without having to check htop or whatever.

[Nuc!eoN]

Nuc!eoN royce
Seeing as Phoronix is the internet HQ of armchair experts, it should be no surprise that some people here look at aesthetics as if they're objective. There's a lot of people here who hate on or refuse to use a DE (or even a distro...) because of the default theme, as though for some weird reason they're too lazy to change that, despite having the patience to use Linux. You don't have to like unicorn vomit (I don't particularly care for it but I get the appeal) but to each their own - I see why you'd want this.

I also think there's a practical use to animated window borders - you could have them change color based on system resource consumption. So for example, maybe it turns blue when idle, and then fades green to red based on CPU or RAM utilization. It could be a non-intrusive way to monitor which foreground task is being particularly demanding without having to check htop or whatever.

Absolutely. That sounds like a really cool idea btw

[Anux]

Nuc!eoN royceno surprise that some people here look at aesthetics as if they're objective.

Maybe that is because they are. Every designer knows that high contrast and saturated colors as well as flashing/moving stuff keeps you distracted. That's why most ads do exactly that and most DEs try to be the opposite.

There's a lot of people here who hate on or refuse to use a DE

To bad for them.

you could have them change color based on system resource consumption

I don't really care about that in most scenarios but maybe that could be useful to others. Instead of destroying the design of he DE one could do the exact same with the program icon and use the colors of the DE to not be distracting as hell.

[schmidtbag]

Maybe that is because they are. Every designer knows that high contrast and saturated colors as well as flashing/moving stuff keeps you distracted. That's why most ads do exactly that and most DEs try to be the opposite.

Yes but nobody said anything about flashing. If your entire peripheral vision is slowly changing colors, it's not likely to be distracting.

I don't really care about that in most scenarios but maybe that could be useful to others. Instead of destroying the design of he DE one could do the exact same with the program icon and use the colors of the DE to not be distracting as hell.

Right, it's all a matter of choice. Besides, if you can customize how it colors things, you should be able to lower the contrast so the border color isn't so vivid, which could appease many. The program icon is also a decent idea.

[Anux]

Yes but nobody said anything about flashing.

I may have just misinterpreted this then:

Can we make them animated as well?

If your entire peripheral vision is slowly changing colors, it's not likely to be distracting.

I'm not sure how this would work? The thing with distraction is, that it takes your focus (your central eye line gets adjusted to it) while the relevant part shifts in peripheral vision.

[schmidtbag]

I may have just misinterpreted this then:

Nuc!eoN wants the window borders to match his PC's LED lighting scheme. Generally, those lights slowly fade between colors, rather than flash or just suddenly change. If the color change is made slow enough, it should be ignorable.

I'm not sure how this would work? The thing with distraction is, that it takes your focus (your central eye line gets adjusted to it) while the relevant part shifts in peripheral vision.

If your entire periphery is bright and colorful then there isn't any one particular location that's attracting your attention. It's kind of like going to a concert hall and you're successfully talking to someone right next to you despite being bombarded by loud music in all directions.
A more akin real-life example would be the difference between a single flashing billboard (which is prone to cause accidents) vs driving through the Las Vegas strip (stimulation everywhere). Flashy billboards make news headlines for accidents they cause, meanwhile none of the top contributors toward car accidents in Vegas are due to the distractions from all the lights. Don't get me wrong - people do crash from distracted driving there, but those are distractions from within their own vehicle (phones, dashboards, passengers, etc).

[Anux]

If your entire periphery is bright and colorful then there isn't any one particular location that's attracting your attention.

But that would also be bad design, you want the attention to be at the center of your window and not drown everything in noise.

I mean, if someone finds merit in RGB borders, it's free software, do what you want. But don't expect any big DE to adapt such design principles.

My whole point was, there have been many studies on how to direct attention with design/colors/animations and that leads to objectively better/worse design.