Display problems in task bar

[Wes Hardin]

In my experience, the difference between the normal and the "darker" one look 
like the difference between having compositing on (and transparency enabled) and 
compositing off (and no transparency).  It's sometimes hard to tell if you have 
a semi-transparent panel if you also have a fairly solid background image, but 
if you put something with some texture as your background, the difference 
between semi-transparent and opaque is more noticeable.  Now why it would go 
from semi-transparent to opaque is another question.  I would conjecture either 
because of a low power/power savings condition on a laptop (which may disable 
compositing) or a mis-configured Xorg conf (which may disable compositing 
altogether).  You don't state what events take place between seeing the normal 
bar and either of the other two examples, so it's tough to guess what might have 
happened.

I have seen the same issue as the "weird" one, but that was during alpha testing 
a few releases back.  Haven't run into it in recent memory.
--
/* Wes Hardin */

On 08/09/2010 02:48 PM, Ingolf Steinbach wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is the normal look of my task bar:
>
>      http://www.jetzweb.de/ingolf/screendump_normal.png
>
> Sometimes, the bar is displayed darker like in
>
>      http://www.jetzweb.de/ingolf/screendump_darker.png
>
> or even
>
>      http://www.jetzweb.de/ingolf/screendump_weird.png
>
> In the latter case, the border between black and dark gray background
> within the task bar seems to always be at the same place.
>
> Is this intended? Is this a known problem? If your answer is "badly
> supported graphics card" (Intel G45/G43 Chipset), then why do the
> display problems only show up in the task bar and not also in other
> applications?
>
> TIA for your help
> Ingolf
>
> Linux helios 2.6.32-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 28 05:14:15 UTC
> 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> (additional information available if needed -- just ask)
>