Just a few hors ago Kde-3.4.0 had finished compiling on my my amd64 Gentoo linux.
i was very impressed with the new features, the way everything seemed that little bit closed to prfoection, slightly better organised control center, new backgrounds, KDM now has much greater functionality.. (many distro's use KDE with Gnoe's login manager)
then i noticed the transparency settings in the window behaviour section of the control center. Previously in KDE you had to use a patch to get this functionality, and even then it was very limited.
i activated it, an installed the dependency "Xcompmgr" and "Transset" to get window shadows and translucency working.
and the result is just amasing !!!!
its all completely configureable, but here is how i have it setup at the moment...
non focused windows are almost completely translucent, you dont realy notice them cliuttering up your desktop, but can easily see them when you want to.
Focused windows are set to be non transparent, and moving windows somwhere between, about half way through the translucency scale.
All popups and menu's Fade in and out perfectly animated,
Because you can see through windows you are dragging, placing them exactly where you want them is very easy.
All translucancy transitions are perfectly smooth... for example when i take focus from one window to anouther, the origonaly focused window slowly becomes see through, and the newly focused window becomes opaque .
Window borders are amasing, they add very distinct indications of where one window ends and anouther begins.
and the best thing, i this is all hardware openGL drawn by your graphics card. (you will need an ATI or Nvidia Graphics card about as powerfull as a GeForce-2 or greater)
i tried to make a few screen shots, but you just cant capture the grace of the animation.
If you have Linux, and a Nvidia or ATI graphics card, i urge you to upgrade to KDE 3.4 and install the X composite manager for Xorg.
Its not just eye candy, this can be usefull too... have you ever been following instructions on a web page whilst typing ??? its annoying having to constantly minimise the text editor to read, then maximise it to write... or having each window only take up half the screen....
with this, you can have both full screen, and be typing onto your text editor, and read the web page underneith it...
After using this for a while... its quite nice how the desktop doesnt suddenly change... all window closes are faded.. all new windows opening are faded.... everything rolls so nice together...
Now, when i boot windows (for counter strike) all the minimising and maximising and popups feels like the screen is punching me in the eyes...
Some people thought 3 dimensional desktops were the future.... maybe one day when we use holograms instead of monitor screens.. but untill that day, transluancy is the future of desktops !!!
