Re: Splash screens (Re: Arlo, a little QA...)

[Kevin Cullis <kevincu orci com>]

Alan wrote:
> It is an interesting idea, but not perfect IMHO.  Basically you're going to
> have two task lists now, one with starting apps (I start more than one thing
> at a time a lot) and one for normal apps.  Eating dock space is not a good
> thing on a 640x480 display (if I had one that is).

The question is: how do you currently operate your window manager? Do
you use task bars?  If not, what else?

> 
> You'd have to make this applet large enough to see the mini-icons for several
> windows that takes up memory/cpu/panelspace.  If it's dynamically resizable
> type thing, well, no offense but that sucks :)  I had my normal tasklist do
> dynamic resizing and to have my panel change size everytime I opened a new
> window (I don't have it all the way across the screen) was extremely
> distracting.  Besides, the mini-icon is going to end up on the task list in a
> second or two *anyway*...
> 
> I personally (speaking as a user) think that the kde way (put an entry in the
> task list with a visual cue that something is happening) is a great way of
> doing it.  A bit confusing at first, but once you see what is going on it's
> nice (especially if you can't hear the HD crunching (which is how I normally
> determine if something is happening or not :)

This was my original idea which I saw from the KDE folks. Personally,
when I start Star Office or other app, I'd like a beginning task bar to
appear indicating that something has started. Having a task bar started
would allow me to continue to work while it's coming up.  The visual cue
of the task bar flashing, blinking, or starts out as a color/pattern
then changes to my theme color takes up less space than a splash screen,
but still keeps me informed of a pending action.  Once the app has fully
loaded, the flashing/blinking/color or pattern change acquires the theme
of my current Window manager.

Kevin

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