At the same time, why does everything need motion? My understanding is that motion should be used if an action subtly changes the UI in a region that's different from where the action was triggered (e.g. toasts)
I think many of these transitions are unnecessary and would feel just as good if they snapped immediately with instantaneous reflow.
Often with out it your brain has to rescan the entire page on each refresh.
"Back-in-the-days" you'd click and stuff would instantly happen, and I don't remember anything being more difficult to visually interpret.
On my Kubuntu desktop if I disable all animations (the whole compositor) I don't feel there is an increased cognitive load of rescaning things - but maybe it's my preexisting memory of the UIs and certain baked in UI expectations. Maybe this animated stuff helps people that are computer illiterate? (software made for the lowest common denominator)
https://tonsky.me/blog/every-frame-perfect/toolbar@2x.mp4, for example
I don't think I would have to rescan the entire page to figure out where things were afterwards. Everything's shifted to the right, just like when I open my browser bookmarks.
The notification area doesn't need animations either, because a GUI is only appropriate for displaying non-urgent notifications. If something really needs urgent attention, you need alarms and flashing lights, not an animated "toast".
Instead, we get a zooming in/out raccoon (making fun of the reader, IMO) for recognizing this problem via the OP author.
Maybe it's just a really hard problem to solve across all devices & latencies... Perhaps more time needs spent on "problem solving" vs "problem description".
flyingshelf•1h ago
I just look at the largest tech companies in the world that with their unlimited finances cannot produce software that isn't glitchy like this.