Windows 7 window transition effects

This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. JerichoFlores Independent Advisor.

Hello RozinaAli, Good day! I'm Jericho, a fellow customer and an individual advisor. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. Previous Next. Jordan Langford Independent Advisor. Hi StephanBright2, I agree Windows movie maker was a very handy tool, its a shame Microsoft has remove this application. However in Photos, if you chose the Create a custom Video option this does give you some of the functionality you are looking for. This will allow you to import your pictures and create transitions between the photos.

How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. In reply to Jordan Langford's post on August 19, Thanks, again. No problem at all, I believe you may be able to find another application to so what you need but the quality of a free Vs paid is a consideration.

La Salvadega. No, there isn't. Works fine on Windows Much of the guidance still applies in principle, but the presentation and examples do not reflect our current design guidance. Strategic use of animations and transitions can make your program easier to understand, feel smoother, more natural, and of higher quality, and be more engaging. But the gratuitous use of animations and transitions can make your program distracting and even annoying.

Animations give the appearance of motion or change over time. Use animation to give feedback, preview the effect of an action, show the relationship between objects, draw attention to change, or explain a task visually. Microsoft Windows uses a background flash animation to give feedback that the object was clicked. Transitions are animations used to keep users oriented during user interface UI state changes and object manipulations, and make those changes feel smooth instead of jarring.

Good transitions feel natural, often giving the illusion that users are interacting with real-world objects. Generally, the best animations and transitions are used to communicate to users non-verbally, and to make state changes more natural and less noticeable.

By contrast, the least effective are gratuitous in that they don't communicate anything or draw unnecessary attention. Animations are best used as a secondary form of communication. They should communicate information that is useful but not critical, and to be accessible, users should be able to determine equivalent information through other means.

Note: Guidelines related to software branding , sound , and accessibility are presented in separate articles. Is an object or scene changing state, and do all of the above conditions for using animations as well as any of the following conditions apply?

Animations and transitions are an effective way to communicate information visually that would otherwise require text to explain or might be missed by users. Using an animation communicates the same information, but in a natural, unobtrusive way. Which would you rather see a thousand times?

Animations and transitions don't have to demand attention to be successful. In fact, they are often used to avoid drawing attention to program mechanics that users don't need to be aware of. Many successful animations are so natural that users aren't even aware of them; rather users would only notice their absence. Frequency of occurrence increases the need for subtlety, so save effects that demand attention for infrequent events that really deserve the attention. Beyond making your program easier to understand and feel smoother, well-designed animations and transitions are a great way to add personality, character, and style to your program.

They can make the user experience more immersive and engaging by giving it a natural, real-world feel. Windows 7 highlights taskbar buttons on hover based on the current mouse position and program icon color. This approach is visually attractive, yet subtle, conveying a humble personality.

However, animations and transitions are most effective and welcome when they serve a clear purpose. They should be used to improved usability, smoothness and flow, and the perception of quality, without harming performance significantly. While some types of animations are used to draw the user's attention, make sure that attention is well deserved and worthy of interrupting the user's train of thought.

The human eye is sensitive to motion, especially peripheral motion. It can be difficult for users to concentrate when there is a flashing taskbar button or a spinning notification area icon.

Avoid using animations to interrupt or distract users, or draw attention to things that don't warrant the user's attention. Programs shouldn't flash their taskbar button unless users must do something important immediately. In this case, the only thing the user needs to do is activate the program. Use animations and transitions because your program needs them, not merely because you can. And for accessibility, don't use animation as the only way to convey essential information.

Make sure that users can obtain equivalent information in a different way. The Windows 7 taskbar window preview morphs for continuity as the user moves from one program to another. In this example, the "move out of the way" animation used by the Windows 7 taskbar feels more realistic than a static insertion point.

In this example, the window "squeegee" animation used by Windows 7 feels authentic because it is consistent with how glass windows might behave in the real world. In this example, the Windows Media Player control has a natural mapping because playing moves the position from left to right.

In this example, the touch panning transition feels responsive by keeping the contact point under the user's finger throughout the manipulation.

In this example, Windows search temporarily draws attention to matching search words, then fades down. In this example, Windows uses an attention-getting animation at startup to make the experience feel special, but such an animation would be inappropriate elsewhere. You'll know that you have achieved the right balance when the overall experience would be harmed if any of these attributes were removed.

Good animations are about effective visual communication, and consistency is crucial to their effectiveness. If you use a specific transition, such as pushing a scene in from the right to advance to the next scene, that should be the only transition used for that purpose and that transition shouldn't be used for any other purpose.

Assigning different meanings to the same animation harms its ability to communicate. By assigning specific animations and transitions to specific meanings, you are creating an animation vocabulary.

This issue applies to animations and transitions that have meaning, not to generic ones that users aren't likely to assign meaning to or those whose purpose is to be unnoticeable. For example, animations like fades and special effects like dissolves have no particular meaning, so they can be used freely. A good vocabulary assigns animations that model an object's real world, physical behavior.

If you need to assign an animation to an object or action that doesn't have a real world counterpart, choose an animation that shows how the object might behave were it real. While the Start menu isn't a real world object, its hover effect lights up like a real-world object might when activated. Each animation in a vocabulary needs to be clearly distinct. The animations should have similar behaviors only if their associated actions are similarly related.

For example, movement transitions suggest navigation, so you can use movement transitions from different directions to indicate different types of navigation. You'll know that your animations and transitions aren't communicating well when users find the results confusing, surprising, or unexpected.

Generally, it's better to achieve a single purpose well than multiple purposes not so well. Ideally, your animation vocabulary should be comprehensive across all areas of your program that need them. If only a few interactions have natural animations, that will draw attention to those that don't.

To learn more about the Windows animation vocabulary, see the Usage patterns section of this article. While the type of animation determines what it communicates, the specific way in which the animation is performed speaks to the program's personality and reinforces its brand.

Your program's personality should reflect the nature of its tasks and the personality of its users, so it's not an arbitrary choice.

Rather, a well-designed personality should feel authentic; never try to force it. The personality should make an emotional connection to the user. Some factors to consider:. The combination of these factors helps determine an appropriate personality for your program.

Here are some suitable combinations for common types of programs:. Naturally, productivity applications must focus on productivity. While a few special experiences can stand out, most other animations should have these characteristics:. Because the goal of these programs is to engage and delight users, the animations and transitions can be much more aggressive by having these characteristics:.

Making an emotional connection is so important for entertainment programs that it's acceptable to bend some rules if doing so helps make users fall in love with the program. For example, it's acceptable if an animation or transition becomes tiresome after the hundredth time if most users are unlikely to use the program that often.

Generally, animations and transitions that are small, natural, subdued, efficient, yet relaxed are the safest bet. Transitions with these characteristics typically take the shortest path from beginning to end, start quickly, end softly, and don't overshoot.

Also, well designed transitions are designed to work well across the entire range of distances in which they will be used. When designing animations, make sure that they don't affect users' ability to use your program efficiently. Generally, make your animations slow enough to fulfill their purpose, but fast enough that they don't interfere with responsiveness, demand too much attention, or become tiresome. While this page turning animation has an engaging, real-world feel, it lessens users' productivity by taking longer to turn pages.

Brief transitions milliseconds or less are a special case especially when they often work off of a delay because users will be aware that they have to wait a split second for them. Users are willing to wait for such animations if:. Users will accept a brief delay for the taskbar button reordering animation because it is very brief and it makes the interaction feel more natural.

There are three ways in which animations can adversely affect performance: speed, responsiveness, and perception.

For speed, some animations are visual veneers over CPU-intensive tasks, so the last thing you should do is make these tasks slower with CPU-intensive animations. The most CPU-intensive animations "heavy" animations tend to:. To ensure good performance, heavy animations should be used only for tasks that aren't CPU intensive, whereas light animations can be used anywhere. For responsiveness, most animations and transitions should be designed so that users can interact while the animation is running.

Unless an animation is part of a process, make it independent of the user's primary interaction and allow users to interrupt it. An animation might not adversely affect a task's performance in reality, yet users may have the perception that it does. For example, don't use an animation that appears heavy for a slow, CPU-intensive task even if it doesn't harm performance, because users might conclude that the animation is the reason the task is slow.

If something looks slow, it will feel slow, so it's better to use animations that feel simple, lightweight, and fast. Using animations with snappy beginnings for CPU-intensive tasks helps. While the animation in the Windows file copy dialog doesn't harm file copy performance, it runs the risk of having users think that it does.

In this example, the sluggish looking progress animation in the Windows Explorer address bar makes some tasks look painfully slow. Animations and transitions have no value if their quality is so poor that they make the experience less smooth and less engaging.

To maintain their quality, animations should be designed to degrade gracefully whenever sufficient system resources aren't available.

Animations can degrade by having variations that require fewer resources such as shorter lengths or lower frame rates , or even not running at all.