Just wanted to suggest a cool desktop backdropo effect. Maybe it's best to enable backdrop fading when compositing is enabled. Sample command: ~ $ xfdesktop --reload --fade No option is even required in the Desktop properties dialog, just an additional argument to xfdesktop.
Should be optional as alpha blending 2 images has a performance cost.
All things being relative I'm not sure the performance argument is relevant here since a) the duration shall be very short and infrequent, say about one second every ten minutes, I guess, and b) if you compare it against playing a movie full screen, for instance, in which case any performance hit is accepted provided it doesn't impede media playing. A mitigating factor, too, is to use CPU multimedia extensions to reduce overhead whenever applicable. Agreed however upon being optional.
Closing old bugreports