A slight UX change in Plasma 6.4.1

Those of you upgrading to Plasma 6.4.1 (released yesterday) may notice a more substantive change than the type we typically make in bug-fix releases: The “highlight window” effect for Task Manager thumbnails is now off by default. This is the effect that makes other windows fade out when you hover over a window’s thumbnail.

Why did we turn it off? Because we discovered that with certain window arrangements and mouse movements, the current implementation could potentially cause full-screen flickering at greater than 3 Hz, which is potentially capable of triggering seizures in sensitive people.

Now, this is very unlikely. You’d need to open multiple full-screen windows of the same app, hover over their task to show thumbnails for them, move the pointer over one of the thumbnails, and then move it rapidly across all the others.

…Unlikely, but not impossible! And until and unless we can fix the effect to not be so flickery with this specific usage, it’s safer to keep it off. Furthermore, even for people who aren’t photosensitive, it’s currently a really unpleasant visual effect.

This work was done as a part of KDE’s recent accessibility push, and specifically the focused effort to make Plasma fully compliant with new EU accessibility regulations. Work is currently going on at all levels of the software stack, with multiple people involved and multiple sponsors funding it — both KDE e.V. itself, and also outside firms and institutions. If you’d like to see more of this kind of thing, donating to KDE e.V. is always a great idea, as it allows KDE e.V. itself to support an even larger amount and proportion of it.

There seems to be a bit of a doom-and-gloom vibe about accessibility in our community lately, but hopefully it’s clear that not only does KDE care, but it puts its money where its mouth is on this topic! Maybe we’re not 100% there yet, but we’re pointed in the right direction and motivated to continue accelerating towards it.