Will meamo 5 allow for disabling transitions and eye candy?

[sachin007]

I was wondering if any one could let me know if we can switch of eye candy and transitions in maemo 5? Something like disabling aero on windows 7. When windows vista came the multi window cycling effects were awesome to show someone... but in reality i never used it even once!
Similarly i would want to disable it unless i show how cool the IT is some iphone guy :D.

[timsamoff]

You installed Windows Vista?! :p

Tim

[qgil]

No, although someone (Mer?) could produce this after tuning Hildon. However, I haven't felt the urge to disable any visual effects in Maemo 5. And I'm a Linux user that has tried and disabled many graphical effects in the desktop.

I think the Maemo 5 UI has the appropriate level of graphical effects in order to help you interact with the system. No bling festival just because.

[Thesandlord]

Install Debian and another window manger?

LIKE COMPIZ FUSION. WOOOHOOOO!!!!!

[konttori]

You can disable all transitions.

[konttori]

I'm uploading now transitioncontrol to extras. It does support tuning all the transitions. You can also just disable all of them with it if you want.
https://garage.maemo.org/pipermail/extras-cauldron-builds/2009-August/009005.html
Upload successful. Installing now to test.

[qole]

One thing I've learned is that one man's "bling festival just because" is another man's "appropriate level of graphical effects". And some people just like over-the-top graphics. I personally tried the rotating cube thing in Compiz for two hours and then turned it off. I actually find Ubuntu's and OSX's default level of transitions to be annoying.

I really like the idea of konttori's transitioncontrol app. I hope it can be put into Settings, and you can do a one-touch transition disable / enable, and maybe even have ways to save different transition sets.

Even better, transition sets should be part of the theme! Because sometimes you just want "bling festival". Especially if you're trying to show off to an iPhone friend :D

[pelago]

Has anyone tried this app yet?

[timsamoff]

Has anyone tried this app yet?
Yes. It's cool. Although, I altered my setting so much that I had to reflash because everything was crazy/weird by the time I was finished. A useful function might be "Restore Defaults." ;)

Tim

[liveslow]

The N900 effects look to be subtle and sophisticated. However, i may end up turning them off or speeding them up to the point you can hardly tell. Sometimes, especially with a phone, the quicker i can get through the screens the better.

[GeneralAntilles]

The N900 effects look to be subtle and sophisticated. However, i may end up turning them off or speeding them up to the point you can hardly tell. Sometimes, especially with a phone, the quicker i can get through the screens the better.

The transitions in Fremantle are generally set so as to take about as much time as it takes to perform those transitions, so turning off animations wont save you much time. :)

[pelago]

Will it be possible to disable the "pixie dust" when closing an app from the dashboard? From videos, most of the transitions look ok, but those little sparkles look a bit cheap to me!

[zerojay]

There's a problem with the app where it conflicts with wiicontrol.

[xgrind]

one question is,

does disabling the transition effects makes the system runs better/faster?

thinking from PC desktop aspect that system will run smoother without eye candy so wonder if this scenario applies to N900 as well.

[Laughingstok]

I have used transition control and put almost everything on 10. Definetely snappier.

[Lacedaemon]

Will it be possible to disable the "pixie dust" when closing an app from the dashboard? From videos, most of the transitions look ok, but those little sparkles look a bit cheap to me!

Try deleting or replacing the sparkles image on the images folder with a transparent png one?
Maybe that works.

[jakiman]

I've changed nearly all of it to zero. Definitely makes it look and feel much faster/snappier. Highly recommended.

[leetut]

i want more bling!
and i want more sparkles!

[mehdiE]

Although, I altered my setting so much that I had to reflash because everything was crazy/weird by the time I was finished. A useful function might be "Restore Defaults." ;)


Until a Restore to Defaults functionalities makes its way into transitioncontrol (would definitely be useful), here are the defaults:

6321
6322

(sorry for the weird colors. Using the Marina (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32761) theme, which is being debugged at the moment - hence the strange fonts).

[mehdiE]

I've now played a bit with transitioncontrol. I have to say that I generally find the visual effects in Maemo 5 to be excellent. They really enhance the look and feel of the OS without usually getting in your way, slowing you down or being tacky.

There are a few exception of course and that's where transitioncontrol comes in handy:

- Rotate In and Rotate Out: set both to 0 to disable the flip animation that plays when the screen orientation switches from landscape to portrait. This makes the orientation switch not pretty but significantly faster than the sluggish default.

- App Open: set to 0 to disable the zoom in effect that plays when an application launches. Then launch any application from a desktop shortcut (Phone, Contact, Conversation or Calculator would be good examples) and see how it now appears instantly. There is no magic here though - the vast majority of applications, even if they appear instantly, will still need a few seconds to initialize themselves. The benefit of this tweak in real life is therefore probably close to null.

These are the only tweaks I saw that could potentially makes the N900 faster. There are other tweaks that you can make but, in fairness, it's likely that in most cases the performance bottleneck lies in either the applications or in your brain more than in the animations. Here are a few tweaks you might want to try though:

- Subview In and Subview Out: set to 10 to make screen transitions within an application much faster (test with Email or Media Player). Set to 0 to disable the sliding animation altogether.

- Task Zoom: set to 15 to make the task manager's zoom in / zoom out animations play faster. Any value less than that will make the animations too jerky. Set to 0 to disable the animations altogether.

- Launcher In, Launcher Out, Launcher Sub In, Launcher Sub Out: set to 15 to make the fade in / fade out animations in the main menu play faster. Lower values work too but might cause some animations to be skipped altogether.

[d-iivil]

Umm.. installed transitioncontrol but it won't appear anywhere (in the application menu nor the settings). Where should it be launched from?

Edit: nevermind. Got it launched from terminal.

Edit #2: heh, now I'm stuck in portait mode all the time :-D It's cool, but I'd like to know how to get it back to landskape after opening the phone app without rebooting the device.

[mehdiE]

Note that transitioncontrol won't work if you have added a custom transitions.ini file to your theme. See here (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=42038) for why you would want to do that.

I guess that in this case you'll have to edit the transitions.ini file manually (haven't yet tried).

[TheConstruct]

The transitions in Fremantle are generally set so as to take about as much time as it takes to perform those transitions, so turning off animations wont save you much time. :)

It has nothing to do about "saving time", it is about NOT wasting resources.

[konttori]

well, transitions are handled by compositor and is completely done on the GPU, not CPU, so they really don't affect the perf at all. Byt having slow transitions lets user see that something is happening.

[Soap77]

wow!
I set all transition to 12 and boy it feels much snappier.
maybe its not saving time but it certainly feels like it does.
launcing contacts in an instant. Tweaking tranistion DOES save time without a doubt.
I hope many ppl see this thread.

thanx :)

[jakiman]

well, transitions are handled by compositor and is completely done on the GPU, not CPU, so they really don't affect the perf at all. Byt having slow transitions lets user see that something is happening.

I noticed that the framerate of the transitions drop when the N900 is either doing some stuff in the background or if you have a few background apps open. It's not as butter smooth as when you only have 1 small application open....

That to me looks like it is still related to the CPU somehow?
(well, I can only assume any GPU activity still requires some CPU cycles)

[qole]

I agree, there's definitely some CPU involvement. When the CPU is under heavy load, individual frames of a transition (eg a blurry window zooming in from the dashboard) can stay on the screen for a second or two.