Hello Karel, Nice of you to share your thoughts. We already discussed this splash screen issue a long time ago in the mailing list, and I remember every bit of it (ok maybe not every bit:p), and I kept that in mind...
For the new guys on the team, Karel is our "HIG guy" he sleeps with the HIG next to his bed and always has some crazy stuff to say about how to make the UI user-friendly and intuitive as much as possible... (yeah, he came in late when amsn 0.x was already bad in terms of user friendliness so don't blame him :p) the current splash screen abstraction class takes the main window as parent. The main window gets loaded first, then we set its title to 'Loading', then we create the splash screen 'in it'. Exactly the way you asked for from the previous discussion. if the loading is fast enough, then the splash screen will just 'blink', if it's slow, then you'll get what you want... The code path is like this : amsn starts create main window mainWindowShown callback create splash screen 'widget' as a child of the main window load stuff create the login window hide the splash screen show the login window. a 'old style splash screen' would already be ugly if it only appeared after the main window is shown on sceen, so the core enforces the front ends to put the splash screen inside the main window.. The QT4 guys used a QSplashSomething, I don't know how it works, but I don't really care.. if it's bad, then it will be fixed. KaKaRoTo On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 07:04:17PM +0200, Karel Demeyer wrote: > Hi all, > > I don't know if I have any credibility with the new ppl on the block but > I'll try to raise an interface issue. My issue being I don't think we need a > splash screen as we're creating a IM program, wich should be lightweight and > not in your way in a "workflow". (I saw code for it in the commits) > > Splash screens are used for several reasons: to give a user feedback that > the program was started like "OK, you've double clicked the icon, don't have > to do it again") and to give an idea on how long it will take for the > prorgam to load till it's usable. > If aMSN 2's startup time would be so long that we need such a measure, I > thin kthe "fix" won't be to add a splash screen which would make the program > use even more resources, but to fix the program so it starts up faster. > The best way to give a user feedback, imo, is to open the main window as > quickly as possible with the right dimensions, even if not everything has > been configured yet. If needed you can add a progressbar in THAT window to > show progress (but I hope this won't be needed, see my previous point). > Then the different features can be un-greyed once they're usable. Once it's > possible to do the login, the user should be able to do this. If the > program needs to load more pixmaps for example, before showing the CL, it > should load these while "logging in..." and only show the CL after > everything needed is initialised. > > On another note this advise: don't use things just because it's possible > (same goes on for "UI special effects"). Rather try to use these > possibilities to create a more consistent user experience or to make the > program more accessible. Therefor another question for those UI-coders: > please think of accesibility (keyboard usage, color-themes suited for > colorblind of bad-sighted ppl etc). > > I hope I don't "shoot" ppl this way (the same goes on for the subject). > > Please give your ideas, > > Karel. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. > It's the best place to buy or sell services for > just about anything Open Source. > http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php > _______________________________________________ > Amsn-devel mailing list > Amsn-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/amsn-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php _______________________________________________ Amsn-devel mailing list Amsn-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/amsn-devel
