GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 693444
Cannot tell if progress bars in inactive windows are at 100% or 0%
Last modified: 2013-02-25 15:18:23 UTC
With the default GNOME 3.6 in Fedora 18, progress bars in windows that are inactive look like empty white rectangles when at 100%. Intuitively this looks "empty" and so it seems that progress is at 0%. Transmission is probably the application that is most seriously affected by this.
Created attachment 235537 [details] Screenshot of white, empty progress bar at 100%
Well, the fact that it says "seeding" should be a good indication of what's going on there :) I see your point, but it's tricky to have a distinct style there for the completely full state. I think as long as the progressbar is not completely filled in, the distinction is pretty clear, see attached screenshot. I feel this is only a problem in an app like Transmission that keep full progressbars visible for a long time, and we shouldn't try to do anything special about it - the normal use case for a progressbar is to hide it when it reaches completion. Do you have a proposal to improve this?
Created attachment 237213 [details] screenshot
I don't really like the greying of all windows except the active one at all, so my proposal to improve the situation is to not grey out inactive windows! You're right that not many apps consist entirely of progress bars like Transmmission does. I find it weird to look at the window though. I realise I'm just one data point, but even though I know the progress bars are full but look empty, every time I look at them I think "why have all those torrents gone back down to 0%?" and I'm distracted while I remember that they've just been greyed out. Maybe having a pattern fill inside them would help?
(In reply to comment #4) > I don't really like the greying of all windows except the active one at all, so > my proposal to improve the situation is to not grey out inactive windows! Heh, that's not going to happen in Adwaita... > You're right that not many apps consist entirely of progress bars like > Transmmission does. I find it weird to look at the window though. I realise I'm > just one data point, but even though I know the progress bars are full but look > empty, every time I look at them I think "why have all those torrents gone back > down to 0%?" and I'm distracted while I remember that they've just been greyed > out. Maybe having a pattern fill inside them would help? I see your point...I think instead we could try to reverse the effect - make the fill darker instead of lighter and use the window background for the unfilled part, to make it clearer what's the filled part. I tried it out and I like it. Jakub, Lapo, what do you think?
Created attachment 237221 [details] proposed style half filled
Created attachment 237222 [details] proposed style filled
I think that would definitely be an improvement.
Going darker for the 'progressed' part makes sense to me. White did feel a little odd.
Thanks for the feedback - I pushed the proposed fix to git master now.