Re: [Usability] Splash screens and startup notification

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

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 :)  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...

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems