
Yosemite – Thoughts on blurriness and design ecosystems - joelunger
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/06/yosemite-thoughts-blurriness-design-ecosystems/
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205guy
Am I the only one who can't stand transparent windows of any sort? It really
distracts me from the contents of the window, and the blur makes my eyes try
to focus it, and then my brain tries to process the image.

I'm still waiting for my dream UI: no transparency, but everything other than
the current window is slightly out of focus (even the dock or windows bar).
When you move the mouse to a new window, it comes into focus. You could even
do several levels of focus (if not in a full-screen app): less for visible
windows more for background such as dock/windows bar and desktop. I haven't
tested this in real life (mockup), so maybe it's been tried and rejected
already.

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wlesieutre
It's really annoying when you're trying to take screenshots too. That's one of
the big reason I like Win8's theme over Aero.

Thankfully OS X's "press space to capture a window" has done a good job at
just putting things on a white background. I'm hoping that the translucency in
10.10 works the same way, but if anybody's got the beta I'd love a
confirmation!

~~~
joelunger
Confirmed. The screenshot renders the blurry panels as solid.

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commieneko
About 10 - 15 years ago I did some tests, animations done in After Effects
mostly, showing some UI concepts that used motion blur, depth of field,
translucency, parallax, etc. I wanted to play around with non-planer surfaces,
but at the time you couldn't do anything like that in After Effects.

I paid absolutely no attention to how "expensive" any of it was in terms of
processing. I was interested in exploring possibilities. Some of the effects
were pretty amazing, it seemed to me. Depth of field control particularly so.

At the time I couldn't drum up _any_ interest. Even as a purely intellectual
curiosity. Several people were actually hostile to the whole concept.

~~~
205guy
What is depth of field in a UI? Is that something like I describe in my other
comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7881182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7881182))?

~~~
commieneko
Depth of field is the area in front of a camera where objects are in focus.
Objects closer or farther are out of focus in some proportional manner.

In some tests I'd define a 3D camera with a specific depth of field that
matched the distance to the object I wanted to be in focus. Say I had an array
of view ports onto documents, processes, or images, the one selected would
come forward to the focal distance and be in sharp focus. I tried using the
effect both coupled and decoupled with actual distance. To me, simply blurring
the element without having the effect being tied to distance did not seem
nearly as effective. I also played around with having selected, but not active
objects coming forward of focus.

I also did some tests with "constellations" of documents connected by lines.
The lines could indicate a path, a hierarchy, connectiveness, or dependency.
The browser would allow you to spin the viewpoint, zoom into and out of
groupings. Depth of field here, as well as aerial perspective (greying and
blueing far away objects) made for a very nice effect, and seriously improved
navigational awareness.

These were all animations, not actual interactive demos. Very exploratory in
nature. Never got enough interest to go deeper into it.

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kolev
Honestly, I'm disappointed by Apple! I've been on Yosemite since day one and
I'm not happy. Colors are inconsistent, some are too bright (folders, the
backward/forward arrows), some of the icons are pretty ugly (Finder). System
Preferences is a mix of different style icons as well. I hope all this mess to
get fixed with the next update. Just compare to, for example, elementary OS
([http://elementaryos.org/](http://elementaryos.org/)). Windows 8.1 is also
way more consistent. I'm really disappointed to see the once leader in UI
delivering _this_!

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3rd3
A blur filter is not particularly expensive nowadays.

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davidcelis
Yeah I'm not sure what machines (or VMs) they were running Yosemite on, but I
haven't had issues with flickering translucent windows even on the first beta
release.

~~~
joelunger
I'm skilled in the art of breaking shit, I guess ;)

Try going full screen and back again quickly. Try flipping through view modes
in finder. Try dragging the sidebar width on the inside edge of finder.

I'm on a Retina MBP. I installed it on a new partition.

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jkw
Are there functional benefits of blurriness other than just being
aesthetically pleasing or "cutting edge," as the author claims?

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joelunger
I think it tends to allow more color to come through in an otherwise sea of
gray panels. Visually differentiating panels is not just aesthetics, but
usability.

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vor_
Those don't look like icons of the 1990s but of the 2000s.

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dasil003
Do the images fail to load for anyone else?

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mahmoudhossam
Yep, doesn't load for me either.

