Re: [Usability] Splash screens and startup notification

[Phil Bull <philbull gmail com>]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 11:34 +0100, karderio wrote:

> I personally do not like splash screens, and I don't necessarily see the
> point to giving status information about application startup. I know a
> few people who think differently though, and I would like to try to find
> the best way to do things, mainly to be able to explain to these people
> why they should avoid splash screens etc. and if need be propose better
> solutions to them.

I don't like splash screens either, and the reason is that you can't
manage most of them like other windows. They get in the way, obscure
applications I want to use and have generally inconsistent behaviour.
You can't easily close or hide them. They also tend to be larger than is
strictly necessary.

> I gather you are against any detailed form of feedback during
> application startup, but are you are against splash screens also ?

I would prefer it if the format of 'splash screens' were changed. Rather
than a big image which vomits irrelevant loading details at me (like the
GIMP tells me exactly what its loading, but too fast for me to read it),
I'd like something more subtle.

My thought was a small rectangle near the notification area or window
list, with a 'Close' button and possibly a progress bar:

------------------------------------------------------
[app icon] Starting $appname [==========     ] [_][x]
------------------------------------------------------

The progress bar need not show any text, not even a percentage value.
Hovering over the rectangle would give a tooltip with the current
loading status, '4/6 Loading module foo...', '5/6 Acquiring network
address...' etc. You can close and hide the rectangle using the buttons
on the right. Hitting the close button kills the app, for example if you
opened it by mistake. This dialog shouldn't appear unless the app will
take more than 2-3 seconds to open.

Just an idea.

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/people/philbull/