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.
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.
I think it's safe to say that it only has a marginal functional advantage; it merely gives you slightly more information about what is going on in the background. It's pleasing to look at because our eyes are used to all kinds of light interactions between objects. Its main purpose however is probably to communicate technological advancement in order to increase interest in their product.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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/). 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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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 46.4 ms ] threadTry 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!