Re: Hi all

[Warren Young <tangent cyberport com>]

Ivan Jager wrote:
> 
> > Better would be to launch a splash screen immediately, so that they know the
> 
> I hate splash screens in general. 

I agree that splash screens are annoying.  They're a symptom of the
Windows 3.1 or MacOS mentality, where only one thing happens at once, so
it doesn't matter if an app takes over the screen while it launches. 
Multitasking on these OSes only happen _after_ the apps you want to
multitask are all started.  By contrast, on a Unix machine I often start
one program, then while it's starting I Alt-Tab back to another running
program window to get a little work done.  If a splash screen comes up,
it often obscures the other program.

What some programs do to alleviate this is to make the main executable
very small.  That brings up the core UI, giving you basically an empty
window, perhaps with a menu and a status bar.  Then the program goes and
loads all its components so that the rest of the UI fills in.

That approach avoids splash screens and hour-glasses, but it also can
make the application look "slow", if you don't understand why it's
behaving the way it is.  Compare and contrast Star Office to Microsoft
Word to see what I mean.
-- 
= Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m