<p>Thx all for responding - those are very informative :-)</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 2, 2010 2:17 PM, "Kyle Ambroff" <<a href="mailto:ambroff@lindenlab.com">ambroff@lindenlab.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution">> This is a feature of the window manager you are using, in this case<br>
> Compiz. Many window managers and implementations implement a protocol<br>> called _NET_WM_PING, which is a way for one X11 client to verify that<br>> another is handling and responding to X11 events.<br>> <br>
> Not all applications support this protocol, but most do, especially if<br>> they are using a fancy widget toolkit like GTK+ or Qt. An X11 client<br>> can give a hint to the window manager by listing _NET_WM_PING in a<br>
> property of its window called WM_PROTOCOLS.<br>> <br>> Compiz will periodically send a ClientMessage to the target client<br>> using XSendEvent(), which includes a timestamp. The receiving client<br>> is supposed to respond immediately by sending the same message back to<br>
> the sender.<br>> <br>> The idea is that each X11 client should have one thread that is<br>> processing events from the X server. If that thread is blocking<br>> because of deadlock, or some operation that is taking a long time,<br>
> then it will not respond to these pings in a timely manner. If it is<br>> not processing these messages, it certainly isn't going to be able to<br>> process events from the user, so the window is considered<br>
> non-responsive. The desaturation you see is a signal to you that the<br>> application isn't going to be responsive to any input.<br>> <br>> Firefox and Eclipse are both large, complicated applications that<br>
> share a UI loop with lots of semi-trusted code. It's easy for one of<br>> your extensions, or JavaScript from a web page to block the UI thread.<br>> If you upgrade to a more recent version of Ubuntu, you'll be able to<br>
> use FIrefox 3.6, which is *much* better at dealing with this. Or you<br>> could download Google Chrome :).<br>> <br>> -Kyle<br>> <br>> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 8:04 AM, <<a href="mailto:timriley@appahost.com">timriley@appahost.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>> -------- Original Message --------<br>>>> Subject: [vox-tech] application greyed out<br>>>> From: Hai Yi <<a href="mailto:yihai2004@gmail.com">yihai2004@gmail.com</a>><br>>>> Date: Thu, December 02, 2010 4:24 am<br>
>>> To: "lugod's technical discussion forum" <<a href="mailto:vox-tech@lists.lugod.org">vox-tech@lists.lugod.org</a>><br>>>><br>>>><br>>>> hello All: I am using ubuntu 9.10, in a quite frequent fashion, I<br>
>>> noticed that the whole UI screen of some applications just grey out<br>>>> after working a while, as if they are under heavy resource consuming<br>>>> tasks.<br>>>><br>>>> So far, this happened to Firefox<br>
>><br>>> This happens to me when using Firefox. It seems to be a reaction<br>>> to the website taking too long to respond. Most likely, it occurs<br>>> when the website starts sending the page but then stops in the<br>
>> middle. But this is just a guess.<br>>><br>>> <snip><br>>><br>>> _______________________________________________<br>>> vox-tech mailing list<br>>> <a href="mailto:vox-tech@lists.lugod.org">vox-tech@lists.lugod.org</a><br>
>> <a href="http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech">http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech</a><br>>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> vox-tech mailing list<br>
> <a href="mailto:vox-tech@lists.lugod.org">vox-tech@lists.lugod.org</a><br>> <a href="http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech">http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech</a><br></div>