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Splash screens == sloth

asserttrue.blogspot.com

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Re: Splash screens == sloth

#51

Post by talmand »

tintin wrote: post #36
JS_startup wrote: post #25

I 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…

You are wrong. Everytime I start Blender (3D content creation suite) I'm blown away by the time it takes to start. Less than 2 seconds! Ready to use! Do I call Blender a complicates program? Yes I do. The feature list can compete with the one of 3ds Max.

I think it's unfair for you to call him wrong, what's wrong with what he said in the context of what he was saying?

I remember Blender loading fast as well. But are you sure every single feature of the program is available as soon as the GUI is displayed? Because I wouldn't be surprised if there's some lazy loading going on. Maybe some things finish loading in the background so they are not available right away or maybe some things are loaded on demand to spread out the loading time.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#52

Post by dgallagher »

I was hoping Adobe would patch Photoshop CS4 on OSX Lion so it stops crashing when quitting, and then hanging indefinitely if you try to re-launch it again without rebooting first. It's the most expensive software I've ever purchased which doesn't know how to [NSApp terminate:nil]; properly.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#53

Post by talmand »

mattmanser wrote: post #47
JS_startup wrote: post #25

I 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 whateve…

Don't like that feature of Windows Update? Turn off automatic updates and do it manually when you wish.

Although I agree with the annoyance of accidentally opening something like Photoshop and having to wait to close it. But a good number of resources that is loading is third-party stuff that demands to be present immediately on startup as opposed to being loaded on demand. But whatever.

Paint has the same UI as what? I hope you're not comparing it to Photoshop or any other professional level software. I believe the modern version of Word is a good bit more than a glorified textbox.

But then you point out exactly why these programs load slowly in your last sentence. Maybe just start using less complex software?

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#54

Post by aycangulez »

I still use Photoshop 6.0 circa 1999. It loads in a few seconds max, and it has all the core functionality necessary for web graphics work. In fact, even PS 5.5 would do fine because it was the first version that supported Save for Web.

If you are using the latest version of Photoshop for web work only, you are wasting time and money for tons of features you don't really need.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#55

Post by gbsi »

ssharp wrote: post #17
zoul wrote: post #6

I 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…

I'm a huge fan of Pixelmator. Read Fabio Sasso's tutorials if you're having doubts, might not necessarily be much on web mockups, inspiring nonetheless. http://abduzeedo.com/tags/pixelmator?page=1

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#56

Post by talmand »

feralchimp wrote: post #14

Boo and/or hiss. If you hate splash screens, use simpler tools or get more RAM. When Photoshop finishes loading, it's ready to kick ass. The Finder, on the other hand, taunts with its almost-readiness. Faking readiness is far worse than setting and honoring expectations.

I agree, faking readiness is far worse to me than actually being ready.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#57

Post by lusr »

feralchimp wrote: post #14

Boo and/or hiss. If you hate splash screens, use simpler tools or get more RAM. When Photoshop finishes loading, it's ready to kick ass. The Finder, on the other hand, taunts with its almost-readiness. Faking readiness is far worse than setting and honoring expectations.

Agreed. If you're seeing that Photoshop splash screen regularly you simply don't have enough RAM. I keep my PC running for weeks on end and seldom close anything. With 12GB of RAM (which costs nothing) I almost never run out of RAM and every application is cached in RAM, so if I DO happen to close an application then reopening it is extremely fast. I shutdown my PC for the first time in weeks last night, and that was only because I was wary of the massive thunderstorm getting through my lightning protector. I don't actually understand why people shut their PCs down at all to be honest.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#58

Post by d4nt »

The title made it seem like this was going to be more of an whistle-blowing blog post by an insider.

Nevertheless, this kind of rant is interesting in so far as it points to what I think a growing momentum behind the UNIX philosophy. What I mean by that is: small programs that do one thing well and interoperate with others.

I wonder whether the underlying cause of this shift in thinking is the levelling off of CPU cycle speeds. Time was when the performance of something like Photoshop or Office would just prompt you to buy a better computer. People would assume their computer had gotten old or out of date. Now that getting new hardware doesn't magically fix things people are asking why certain things take so long and comparing programs' performance.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#59

Post by powertower »

JS_startup wrote: post #25

I 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…

Sounds to me like he's either temporarily enraged, or is trying to get fired.

The spashscreen does 1 thing, it tells the user that the app is loading and you don't need to click the exe/icon again.

His solution to a 5-10 second load time is to provide a fake UI, record phantom mouse clicks, and also give the user a game to play, only makes everything worse.

Some apps have to initialize, and without that you are left with an empty shell of a UI that has no functionality. Or even worse, a slugish UI that initializes in-place or during work... Which then causes the typical user to go online and rant about how his app is broken or unresponsive.

Though I like what he has posted on the rest of his blog... http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#60

Post by saturdaysaint »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #20
saturdaysaint wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's talking about smartphone app behavior, not the OS. A lot of good apps (with notable exceptions like Facebook and Kindle) work to minimize the "splash" by throwing up a graphic that looks like the UI, even while the app is loading and the UI (briefly) isn't even responsive to user input. I like it - it definitely smooths the transition into using that app.

You can probably do that with a simple smartphone app where the first screen is basically just a static menu. However with (let's say) eclipse or photoshop , when the program loads the first thing it displays is either my code or a graphic I am working on. How would it allow me to interact with that in any kind of useful way without actually loading the program?

Good question - I understand that this is a lot harder for heavy professional apps, but I'm with the author in that I'd prefer a subtler transition. Maybe show me the rudiments of the interface (toolbars, menus, etc.) and a subtle progress bar for loading/opening the app and your last file.
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