Splash screens: a summary

[Jorge Ferrer Zarzuela <jferrer ieeesb etsit upm es>]

As William Kendrik has said there is already an application
which does almost everything that has been said. It's name is
Xalf (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~altic/projects/xalf/)

IMHO is extremly good for users to have some feedback when they launch a
program. As has been talked there are many ways to give them this
feedback. The fist three of this list are already implemented in Xalf:

1)Splash screen: IMO we all agree that they are not great, and
should be turned off by default.

2) Fake window: Which makes an entry appear in the task bar. Maybe it
would be a good idea to give such an entry a distinct look so that users
know just by looking at it that the up is not running yet. Besides a
graphical different IMO the idea of the entry saying Starting X app is
good and GSR's idea of having more information if the task bar is greater
is a very good one too.

3) Mouse change: I mean showing a clock or something similar as Windows
or Macs do. It hasn't been discussed much but IMHO it has a big
advantage comparing it with the entry at the task bar: The user locus
(focus) of attention is at the mouse at the moment of launching the
application, not at the task bar. Maybe options 2) and 3) could be used
together.

4) Launching apps applet: It's another nice idea.


Which one is used should be configurable from Xalf's capplet, but we
should provide a nice default, don't you think?

Talking about configuration, I believe there should exist an option in the
capplet to change the behaviour of all the apps. This way if you don't
like the default behaviour you can change it in all apps easily (not
having to go app by app).

Then apps could have a configuration such as this one:
	(x) Use global launch feedback
	( ) Use particular feedback
	  	[ ] Use splash screen
		[ ] Show clock at the cursor
		[ ] Show task entry

(with better labels off course ;-)


	Jorge