About loading screens, I've always wondered why games don't try to get rid of these (maybe they do?).
Anyone familiar with why you have to have loading screens in games? Would it be possible to pre-load a level while you're playing?
Splash screens == sloth
41–50 of 246 posts
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#42This weekend the 3G mysteriously stopped working on my iPhone, so after months of use, I rebooted it. Rebooting the iPhone takes 1+ minute, and there _is_ a kind of splash screen shown during that time. The reason it appears instantenous during normal use is that it doesn't actually boot or load, it just turns the display back on. Also, many iOS apps actually have splash screens, you just don't see them very often as…
> If you have an SSD (like your iPhone), then swapping Photoshop back into main memory will also be much faster. I think the point the author is trying to make is that it shouldn't be up to the consumer to spend more money to make their programs run faster. Software reform is what's needed and "just buy an ssd" is a very strong argument.
Whenever you can run the same software on a variety of hardware with different specs and capabilities, it's always up to the consumer to spend more money to make that software run faster.
Having said that, I agree with the idea of making software less monolithic and making it start up as fast as possible, as long as it is possible. However, when I say that I want a program to start up fast, I mean that I want it to start being useful fast. Quite a few of author's ideas are not about bootstrapping gradually, they're about faking it. It's like going to a place that used to have a "closed for lunch" sign and discovering that it's now open, but populated by robots whose personality is an Eliza-like AI.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#43I don't think the guy will lose his job. Do you? He is addressing a very real issue. Adobe should read this.
Besides whether the issue he's addressing is real or not (i dont agree with him), this is not the way to address the company you work for and i would completely agree with Adobe if they do fire him for this.
I wouldn't fire him but I would ask that he be a little more informed on how modern technology works before going on a rant about it. Especially when he aims his complaints at his own company. There are REASONS for some programs to load slow, it's not like everyone is competing for the slowest loading software.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#44I hate Adobe software with passion. I used to love Macromedia Fireworks, so that I bought a copy of Fireworks after Adobe acquired Macromedia. I had to jump through some crazy hoops to prove that I did not steal the product, and that was nothing compared to what I had to do after buying a new computer – it turns out that I was supposed to unactivate the product on the old one and then activate on the new one. This is…
Do you think Pixelmator is a good replacement for Fireworks? Fireworks has been really great at allowing me to quickly mock-up different web layout concepts without having to write any HTML code. I know some are in the "concept with HTML camp", but I've found Fireworks to be so much faster. I've never bothered too much with Photoshop since Fireworks did 90% of what I wanted. I'm like many, however, in grumbling about…
Pixelmator is a almost perfect clone of Photoshop 5. Not CS5, version 5 from 1998 or so. Even the shortcut keys are identical. I happen to like it a lot.
If your primary use of FW is to mock something up and export it as HTML and image slices, Pixelmator is not for you. You can get a free trial, IIRC, and see for yourself.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#455-10 seconds? This guy is complaining about 5-10 seconds?
I hate bloatware. I despise behavior like the sloth and neglect Microsoft inflicted on Windows XP once Vista shipped and I loathe the abandonment of gingerbread phones like my late Droid G1 (unaffectionately nicknamed "the brick" in its final days) by Google once they entered the crunch phase for ICS, but 5 to 10 seconds?!?!?!?
Get a grip... If an app has any mandatory online component whatsoever (not that photoshop does), its boot time is unavoidably non-deterministic. Good luck fixing that (not that there's any excuse for avoiding latency that can be avoided)...
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#46Figure this is the right time to ask about SSDs .. Any recommendations for MBP SSDs?
Intel drives have good reputation.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#47I don't understand what he's angry about. Photoshop, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, these are all enormously complicated programs that require resources to load. That doesn't make them bloatware and it doesn't make the programmers lazy. His proposed solution sucks too. Show the UI while it's loading so the user can impotently click around waiting for the program to "turn on". Windows does this when it boots up and it…
Think of the 100s of millions or even billions of hours of unhappiness caused by whatever utter wanker designed the windows update system. All that misery waiting to go home to your actual life but you can't because your laptop's displaying 'Do not turn off or unplug your computer'. No, just sit here and watch me. Or those times you accidentally opened Word or Photoshop or MySql Workbench (god that's slow) or whatever. You made a mistake? Well fuck you. I'm not listening to you, says your computer, I'm just going to ignore you for a little bit.
That's why.
And they're not enormously complicated, paint opens instantly and has the same UI. Word is little more than a glorified textbox. Programmatically all the features make those programs enormously complex, but the actual common use of the programs are simplicity itself.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This practice actually goes against the recommendation of iOS Human Interface Guidelines, although it doesn't seem like Apple actually enforces it: Display a launch image that closely resembles the first screen of the application. This practice decreases the perceived launch time of your application. Avoid displaying an About window or a splash screen. In general, try to avoid providing any type of startup experience…
That's a bit surprising to me. I haven't noticed this (not much of an app person), do many apps use the recommended technique? Personally I would find a splash screen that looks like the first screen to be confusing.
All Apple apps (inbuilt or downloadable) follow this guideline. Amongst the non-Apple apps that follow it are Reeder, WhatsApp, Twitter, Sykpe (sort of), AIM, Shazaam, Instapaper and so on.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This practice actually goes against the recommendation of iOS Human Interface Guidelines, although it doesn't seem like Apple actually enforces it: Display a launch image that closely resembles the first screen of the application. This practice decreases the perceived launch time of your application. Avoid displaying an About window or a splash screen. In general, try to avoid providing any type of startup experience…
That's a bit surprising to me. I haven't noticed this (not much of an app person), do many apps use the recommended technique? Personally I would find a splash screen that looks like the first screen to be confusing.
Plenty do. The idea with that guideline is that it resembles the first screen the user sees, but in a "vague" manner - that is, maybe it just has the title bar and empty table view with no data filled in.
The idea is to give the user the impression the app has already started instantaneously, and you're just waiting for data to roll in to populate the UI.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you have an SSD (like your iPhone), then swapping Photoshop back into main memory will also be much faster. I think the point the author is trying to make is that it shouldn't be up to the consumer to spend more money to make their programs run faster. Software reform is what's needed and "just buy an ssd" is a very strong argument.
Whenever you can run the same software on a variety of hardware with different specs and capabilities, it's always up to the consumer to spend more money to make that software run faster. Having said that, I agree with the idea of making software less monolithic and making it start up as fast as possible, as long as it is possible. However, when I say that I want a program to start up fast, I mean that I want it to s…
I might have misstated. I mean that consumers shouldn't have to compensate for poorly written (in terms of efficiency and speed) software. Sure buying an SSD would increase the write speed, which is usually the bottleneck for a system, but the consumer can save a couple hundred bucks if the developing company focused on speed instead of bloat.
And I agreed about the "faking" issue. Just like how Windows will silently keep loading tons of services in the background after a reboot, but shows you a desktop and makes you think you are free to click and launch stuff.