Re: Hi all

[Ivan Jager <ivanjager bigfoot com>]

Tom Musgrove wrote:
> 
> Kevin wrote
> > 3. When Macs (and Windows) start up a program, the mouse pointer has the
> > sand timer come up or a watch had rotating.  When I've shown GNOME to
> > first time users, that's what they first ask, "Is the program started?"
> > A task bar should be "initialized" to show the "startup" of the program
> > until it is ready to be used.  This should be a two step process: task
> > bar is initiated and is "unuseable" until the program is ready, then it
> > should be like normal task bars.
> 
> Better would be to launch a splash screen immediately, so that they know the
> program is starting, the hour glass is too subtle for some novice users
> (hence they click on the icon 30 times and launch 30 copies of the program).
> I seem to recall someone mentioning that KDE 2.0 does this...

I hate splash screens in general. Especially the one Star Office has. It puts a
rectangle with a butterfly in the middle of the screen, and I havn't found any
way to get rid of it so I can continue reading my mail while it starts. I know
Star Office isn't part of Gnome yet, but I don't want all Gnome apps doing the
same. To be precise, I don't want any of them doing it.

A new tasklist entry would be good, but it might not be so obvios to newbies.
(it is not exactly where they were looking when they clicked)

An hour glass would be right where they are looking, but if it stays an hour
glass for too long, like for Star Office or Netscape to start, it would be
bothersome. And if it stays for just a while the user wouldn't know if it
started and died or is still starting.

OS/2 draws some diagonal lines under the icon while the program or folder is
open. It lets the user know that the program is running. For folders it also
changes the icon from a closed folder to an open one. The lines aren't exacly
beautiful, but they do the job. Also when you double click a program that is
already open it just shows the open one. (unless you configured it to open it
again) (if you right click it you can get either behaviour) When starting a
program from the menu (not the right click one) it always starts another copy.
(I'm not sure how good that is, I guess it's ok) Does the Mac do something
similar, or was that BeOS?

Just another idea that wasn't discussed here AFAIK.

-- 
Ivan Jager