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Submission details

28 +38/-10 votes

Start Menu does not fade in

Submitted by Ensign Joe on August 31, 2008 to Aesthetics

If you click on the start orb the Start Menu instantly appears, it does not fade in.
This issue was already present in Windows XP and the cause might be that the Start Menu is a complete window instead of a simple menu as the others are.
The classic start menu fades in because it naturally *is* a menu.

Because I only run Vista in VPC for this Taskforce I do not know if this happens with Aero.
But it does happen with the Aero Basic Theme.

Make the Start Menu fade in when the user clicks on the Start Orb.
Also the Orb should fade in like the Play/Pause button in WMP or the Slideshow one in Photo Gallery

Low

Low

Not fixed

Discussion (20 comments)

luskaner wrote on August 31, 2008, 3:08pm

+1
It also happen with the Aero Theme

blueskynis wrote on August 31, 2008, 6:35pm

Yea, it is very annoying

bearluke wrote on August 31, 2008, 8:23pm

-1
fade = slow = people will complain

luskaner wrote on August 31, 2008, 8:26pm

Yeah but it could be customizable and disabled by default and all OK

blueskynis wrote on August 31, 2008, 8:40pm

I don't find other menus that fade are slow

.Chris wrote on August 31, 2008, 9:57pm

yeah there are other menus that fade and they dont slow.... bearluke is on crack

blueskynis wrote on August 31, 2008, 10:58pm

bad bearluke :)

Ensign Joe wrote on August 31, 2008, 11:44pm

@Bearluke: Fading in a menu does not automatically mean that you can't interact with the menu till it's fully opened...

.Chris wrote on September 1, 2008, 12:16am

it just makes a nice transation

Good_Bytes wrote on September 1, 2008, 2:32am

-1, I hated this in XP. The problem is that the button state "press" only showed when the menu fully appeared, which was very confusing. I saw many people (that don't know anything about computer) clicking like crazy on it, because the button doesn't respond. Well hey learned to live with it, but it was an annoyance. Granted it could be fixed... but I don't think so.

jamesrising wrote on September 1, 2008, 7:00am

@bearluke:

MacOSX and certain GUIs in Linux have fade in menus and they're not slow, are they? Shutup and go away.

vbtwo wrote on September 1, 2008, 5:32pm

@jamesrising
Mac menus don't fade in, they appear instantly, but they do fade out. A lot of normal Windows menus do fade in though, and it's not slow, just try right-clicking on your desktop.

tino wrote on September 1, 2008, 11:25pm

It should fade out but appear instantly. That would be the best solution, IMO. The Office team has done this in Office 2007. It feels good and it is also productive.

tino wrote on September 1, 2008, 11:32pm

@Ensign Joe: Maybe, but you can't really interact with elements before you have "read" them.

bearluke is right here. Waiting for a feedback is a very bad experience even when it's just milliseconds.

Ensign Joe wrote on September 2, 2008, 10:40pm

@Good_Bytes: Maybe you didn't notice that the Start Menu in Windows XP does not fade in either...

domstapleton wrote on September 3, 2008, 2:33pm

A fading Start Panel would not cause problems unless you had a very slow PC indeed, in which case you shouldn't/couldn't run Vista anyway. Even though the Start Panel is a seperate window unlike a menu they could still use the AnimateWindow API, for example, to make it fade. So it can be done.

Ensign Joe wrote on September 4, 2008, 2:45am

@tino: Well we experienced users know where-to-click and the menu responds to it even if it's not fully drawn. An unexperienced users is going to read the menu in any case and so in my opinion those few milliseconds ol' granpa can't read the menu is negligible.
And since Windows 2000 no one ever bothered about the other menus.

tino wrote on September 14, 2008, 8:48pm

@Ensign Joe: Yes, it may be not measurable but could cause a bad experience because the ui feels slower. The Office 07 team has learned that lesson.

SomethingElse wrote on March 21, 2010, 4:10pm

I liked the animations from that youtube vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hBIDS7J4U

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