Re: Future of desktop splash screens - some thoughts

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Christian Neumair wrote:

> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:07:25 +0200
> From: Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> Subject: Re: Future of desktop splash screens - some thoughts
>
> Am Donnerstag, den 14.10.2004, 20:55 +0100 schrieb Alan Horkan:
> > Devils advocate
> >
> > should load fast enough to make splash screens unnecessary!
> >
> > I'd favour some excuse for banishing splash screens entirely,
> > the are almost as bad as ad-banners embedded in a program.
> >
> > If I had something more productive to say I would have said it onlist.
>
> Maybe you are completely right! Why don't you share that opinions with
> others (on list)? I've disabled the splash screen completely for now and
> don't find that anything lacks from my desktop.

see above for offlist posts, moving back onlist as suggested...

There is no practical reason for a spash screen.  Exactly none.

If the desktop or application starts fast enough a splash screen is
unnecessary.  For some applications the splash screen provides a useful
suggestion that something is actually happening but we have startup
notification for that.

Some splash screens are made less impractical by showing additional status
information about what is loading but they are really unecessary.  I
believe commercial software use them to strengthen brand recognition more
than anything else.

I have a completely untested theory that splash screens have a
pyschological impact and make things feel slower (if not actually making
them slower), so I always disable them whenever possible.
The whole destkop doesn't even need to be fully loaded immediately, the
faster the panels were shown the faster it would seem to be loading.

At the very least it is far less work to disable the splash screen than it
is to customize it.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org
Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org