Cinnamon: Blur effect for transparent menus

[harogaston]

It all comes from a 2012/2013 post on forums.linuxmint.com.
The post:
Cinnamon effects and visual transparency

The idea:
Adding a blur effect to transparent menus/panels/windows. Because transparency without blur just doesn't seem to work in most cases.

The solution:
They seem to be using ClutterEffect and ClutterBlurEffect to achieve this.

The proposal:
Is there any room/ people interested to bring this into Cinnamon?

I'll be happy to provide you with more details if needed.

Finally I include a few images of the work that was done in 2012:

[mtwebster]

This is actually merged in, it's just not used by any themes. The problem was (and I imagine still is) there was a huge performance impact when this was in effect, like when opening menus. So it was left in, but it was never used, and (I just tried it) there are a few issues with it currently as well the still-present performance hit.

The original developer was going to rewrite it a different way to hopefully improve performance, but real life called, and he's been uninvolved for some time.

[harogaston]

Oh I didn't know that. Do you happen to know where was it implemented so I don't have to go through all the src?

[mtwebster]

You can add this line:
https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/blob/a236eb3dc90feb41ed2e06c6dffec442f5a3284b/data/theme/cinnamon.css#L106

To your current theme, and it should apply it after restarting cinnamon.

There are a few other bumpmaps in that folder as well.

[harogaston]

Thank you for that info. Sad it had to be removed though.
I just tried it on panel menus and notifications. I don't experience any lag or performance issue, pop up menus open as usual. But I can't manage to have the bumpmap to appear at the right location on the screen for all cases, especially for notifications.
How can I learn more about the cinnamon.css properties/selectors. Should I go thorough the /src/st/ files?

Thank you for your time and response.

[anandrkris]

https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/2442 - Linking another issue on the topic. Can this be closed?

[AyoungDukie]

This would be a neat feature to see implemented; after playing around with it, I was slightly disappointed to see that this interacts somewhat poorly with transparency. It would be interesting to see what theme-makers would be able to develop with a fully functional form of this, is there any chance of this being revised for more efficient use, even if it is down the road a ways?

[harogaston]

@anandrkris you should address @dalcde regarding that https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/3466#issuecomment-59180841

[AdmiralAnimE]

I would love this to be fixed/implemented. At least simple blur, thats probably enough. It gives a lot of possibilities for themes and it looks very nice. As other people are saying - partial transparency is very popular but it's not nearly as effective when there is no blur.
Currently the bump maps are extremely buggy and the blur doesn't work.

[harogaston]

I "fixed" it. I just installed openSUSE with KDE. It is an excelent desktop
where transparency and blur work perfectly.

El jueves, 29 de octubre de 2015, AdmiralAnimE [email protected]
escribió:

I would love this to be fixed/implemented. At least simple blur, thats
probably enough. It gives a lot of possibilities for themes and it looks
very nice. As other people are saying - partial transparency is very
popular but it's not nearly as effective when there is no blur.
Currently the bump maps are extremely buggy and the blur doesn't work.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
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[AdmiralAnimE]

Yea I know, KDE 5 is nice and can be more beautiful at the moment - much
more themes and possibilities. But for me Cinnamon is simpler and easier,
and there are a few things that are possible here but not in KDE.
Overall it's the small things that matter when choosing between a few
different but very similar things, in this case desktop environment /
distribution.

2015-10-29 13:15 GMT+02:00 Gastón Haro [email protected]:

I "fixed" it. I just installed openSUSE with KDE. It is an excelent desktop
where transparency and blur work perfectly.

El jueves, 29 de octubre de 2015, AdmiralAnimE [email protected]
escribió:

I would love this to be fixed/implemented. At least simple blur, thats
probably enough. It gives a lot of possibilities for themes and it looks
very nice. As other people are saying - partial transparency is very
popular but it's not nearly as effective when there is no blur.
Currently the bump maps are extremely buggy and the blur doesn't work.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
<
https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/3466#issuecomment-152147318>
.

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[Vahan86]

@JosephMcc, can we mark this issue as a feature request?

[dominichayesferen]

@mtwebster Could this feature be unlocked for the panel in 3.0? Tried it and it didn't work...

[mfreeman72]

Agreed, @feren I cannot get this feature to work in Cinnamon 3.2. I love transparency in themes, but I hate when what's the background interferes visually with what's in the menu. Blur is a must!

[harogaston]

I will close this, as I am not longer interested.

[ijash]

i am supporting this idea +1.

[mfreeman72]

I really wish this issue wasn't closed. Cinnamon is a great desktop, but when any sort of transparency is enabled, it looks terrible. It desperately needs a blur effect for transparent menus! And no, I'm not going to install KDE