Re: [Usability] Splash screens and startup notification

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Calum Benson wrote:

> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:07:31 +0000
> From: Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>
> Cc: karderio <karderio gmail com>, usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Splash screens and startup notification
>
> On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 11:59 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> > The HIG doesn't mention them as far as I recall (updates to the HIG
> > notwithstanding).
>
> Hmm, no, it doesn't, but discussions about them on these lists usually
> come out fairly strongly against.  If an application is going to take a
> few seconds to start up, chances are you want to get on with something
> else while it's starting.  Even if it's a well-behaved splash screen,
> that usually still means having to move or dismiss a window that's
> popped up in the way of what you were doing, which is always annoying.
> And of course, if the app isn't going to take a few seconds to start up,
> you don't need a splash screen anyway :)
>
> FWIW, splash screens also tend to be fairly colourful, which is bad for
> accessibility.
>
> > Abiword has a splash screen and I think it is an interesting example worth
> > taking a closer look at.  Abiword is so fast to start up you probably
> > wouldn't see the splash screen at all on a modern machine.  The orginal
> > AbiSource developer wanted to make sure the branding was shown, so the
> > splash runs seperately and is shown for ~5 seconds even though the program
> > is already ready to go.
>
> That sounds pretty evil to me :)

Okay less evil than most splash screens but still evil.

"The lesser of two evils is still evil"

> Many users don't think to click on splash screens because historically
> they've always been non-interactive, so deliberately extending the
> startup time for those users isn't really very friendly.  I know I'd be
> a bit pissed off if I discovered after using an app for a few years that
> I could have made it start up in half the time just by clicking on its
> splash screen...

There is also a prefernce allowing it to be turned off, and a command line
arguement --nosplash unfortunately some applications use --no-splash and
disbling the splash one application at a time is painful.

Erm right, anyways...

So only a few people interested in heavily branding their product actually
want splash screens, users dont want them and startup notification covers
any technical excuse there might have been for using a startup dialog.

I/We should file a bug and propose an addition to the Guidelines strongly
discouraging the use of splash screens?
If someone is convinced splash screens are a necessary evil should we even
try and convince them how to make a less evil splash screen?

Thanks in advance

Sincerely

Alan Horkan