Generic splash screen class?

[ian reinhart geiser]

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On Wednesday 10 July 2002 04:53 pm, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 July 2002 12:45 pm, Ryan Cumming wrote:
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> > Hi,
> >
> > Splash screens are absolutely evil. They distract the user, bloat the
> > application, and actually increase startup time. If you want to prevent
> > splash screen related code duplication, remove the splash screens
> > entirely.
>
> If your application is slow to start up then they improve the perceived
> responsiveness of the system.

Also in applications like KDevelop where most of the load time is in loading 
plugins and such, a splash screen can give some progress feedback.  Users 
love to watch that little hourglass at the bottom of the screen i suppose, 
but I think a common interface to provide visual feedback to the load process 
would be a very nice addition.

Anyone who has studied HCI in school can tell you that splash screens are very 
nice ways to provide the user with some comfort that a large applicaiton 
starting has not crashed.   Something the current startup sequence cannot do.


3 things I would like to see are a progress bar interface, a status message 
interface, and an icon sequence interface... basicly a generic version of the 
KDE startup splash screen :)

Just my 2c
- -ian reinhart geiser
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