Unnecessarily heavy, idea for improvement

[ipproductions]

Since the blur is not dynamic I don't see why it needs to be computed on the go.

Why not generate two images one with half and one with full blur (according to user settings) and fade between original - half - full when needed and just use the masked full for the panel?

The quality of the blur animation with this low spec workaround is not as good but it's just as close and hard to tell difference in quick animations.

[yozoon]

Good idea! It is true that at least the blur of the overview background doesn't have to be dynamic. The fading of the blur strength you mention is actually more complicated than the way it is currently implemented: In the current version I only apply one effect with a fixed blur strength to the corresponding UI element and just fade between the unchanged original background image and the background with the blur applied - so there is no active recalculation of the blur radius etc.. Nonetheless I just recently understood the actual working principle of the ClutterOffscreenEffects, and you are insofar right with calling it "computed on the go" as the static blur effect is recalculated each time the underlying actor is marked for recomputation - which happens quite often during a transition animation. So there we could potentially save some computation time by using an image instead of the effect. I'll look into it once I have some time to spare :)

[markonius]

Hmmm, if I understand correctly, currently the blur isn't recalculated every frame, right? My framerate (Fedora 31, Wayland) drops considerably in the overview with this exension.

[starscouts]

Me too, when I set the blur to max and open the activities menu it's a big lagy, which can freeze the whole desktop when running big apps (like games or IDEs).
This extension is pretty cool, but hardware rendering (with GPU, if not already) should be good. Windows can do heavy blurs without consuming that much resources, why not GNOME as well?