Re: [Usability] Splash screens and startup notification

[karderio <karderio gmail com>]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 08:26 +0100, Stefan Kost wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> karderio wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I was wondering if there was any sort of dogma concerning splash screens
> > for GNOME applications.
> > 
> > Seeing as there are virtually no GNOME apps that use splash screens, I
> > would guess that they are not necessarily recommended. The only purpose
> > I can see them serving is showing feedback for application startup, for
> > applications that take some time to start (I'm thinking openoffice).
> > 
> > Is there any way that startup feedback could be presented to the user
> > other than with a splash screen ? For example, when you have an
> > applicationX starting, instead of the "Starting applicationX" in the
> > window list, could you not have "Starting applicationX - Step Y" and
> > change this as the startup progresses ?
> > 
> > Love, Karderio 
> 
> This indee sounds good. I don't like it when splsh screen covering my screen 
> space. What about having a progressbar inside the window list. Thus immediately 
> after starting the app, the window-list entry would appear with a progressbar 
> inside.

Would it not be hard (impossible) to calculate the percentage of time
until the end of startup for the progressbar ? Would you not have to add
specific code to each application ? If you wanted some sort of
indicator, would a throbber not be more appropriate ? I would think
textual output could be interesting, such as "Starting Bluetooth Client
- Connecting to remote device" or "Starting OpenOffice - Initializing
Java", the user would know what he is waiting for, and it would help
with troubleshooting...

>  From the technical pov, we would need a spalsh api, so that we could show a 
> uniformous splash dialog, if there is no window list or the embeded startup 
> status if there is.

Does this mean there is no way of doing this with the existing libnotify
or such ? I was sort of hoping this would not be too complicated :(

Love, Karderio