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Splash screens == sloth

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Re: Splash screens == sloth

#81

Post by glfomfn »

What is so hard for people to understand ? Photoshop needs time to load, because that time is quite significant they give you some kind of feedback to let you know that 'hey the damn thing is loading, please wait', what's so bad with that? what would the alternative be?

The title starting with "Adobe employee" tries to make it sound like its a significant opinion regarding the matter, the author of the article doesn't seem to be a programmer or holding a position that deals with the process of making a program, what's even worst is the fact that he is completely clueless regarding the matter, he suggest "e.g., show a UI right away and let an instance of the program in the cloud operate against my gestures, until the local copy boots fully and can re-sync with me", seriously ??? I started wondering if i am being trolled at that point.

It takes 4 seconds to do a cold start of Photoshop on my laptop (which isn't a top notch laptop), on an older computer and with previous versions of Photoshop it would take 10-15seconds which would still be fine, the process doesn't block me from doing something else in the mean time.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#82

Post by batista »

icegreentea wrote: post #65
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. Though it would be really cool is Photoshop could somehow do progressive loading, so you can get the main UI + core functions up and running, and then bring all the plugins on in the background. Let the user choose their load order (I don't think this is too much to ask for a serious piece of software), and voila. For example, the 3D engine in the newer Photoshops. I never use it (it just doesn't overlap with…

Agreed. Though it would be really cool is Photoshop could somehow do progressive loading, so you can get the main UI + core functions up and running, and then bring all the plugins on in the background.

That's what it ALREADY does, actually.

It takes that much time for just the basic UI code (plus plugin registration etc). It doesn't load the plugins or filters in memory before they are first use.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#83

Post by JS_startup »

mattmanser wrote: post #61
talmand wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Their interface is the same. Are you utterly blind? Stop looking at the UX as a programmer and imagining the complexity of the features. The actual screen is displaying exactly the same stuff. There's a big white box to draw in and bunch of buttons to press. You do not need to initalize all the 3rd party tools, you just have to find out which tiny little icon to add on a task bar or extra menu items to add, and why d…

I once wrote a clone of Microsoft Word for a company looking to move away from Office dependency - I think you're really understating the complexity of something like Word when you call it a glorified textbox or say it should load as quickly as MSPaint because they both use the ribbon UI.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#84

Post by tintin »

talmand wrote: post #51
tintin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Of course Blender is lazy loading as you like to call it. Why load features the user is not using atm? The base of the program is just way better than lets say Photoshop.

Ever checked an online Photo editor? (http://pixlr.com/editor/ for example after a quick Google). Open the page and there it is: your interface ready to use.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#85

Post by duwease »

rauljara wrote: post #28

Louis CK has a fantastic rant about people complaining about technology being too slow (and technology, in general). It helped to put my own rage in perspective. I find myself getting less pissed at technology since watching it, and I kind of hope that lasts. (NSFW) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grxL5umOE6g&feature=relat...

Ha, this is exactly what I came in to post. I understand that pursuit of perfection is what drives the industry to become better, but at the same time I have a hard time not laughing at the someone raging about a load-time measured in seconds that will be seen, what, once a day? Once a week? Given that the budget for any software is finite, I can't work up any fury that they didn't shave seconds off a once-off operation instead of dumping it into new features, or performance on longer-running or more-often-used functionality.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#86

Post by Splines »

smacktoward wrote: post #63
jnorthrop wrote: post #23

I wonder how Kas Thomas feels about the credit roll that occurs at the start of a movie? You know the one where they show the logo of the movie studio, then the production company, then the producer, editor, et al. I see the software splash screen in the same light. It is giving credit to those who have put it together. Now, obviously entertainment is different then a work application, but many of us feel that softwa…

That's an example that proves the opposite of your point. You may notice if you watch some older movies (pre-1950s, mostly) that they used to run the ENTIRE credits list at the start of the film. The WHOLE THING. Not just the credits you see at the beginning today, but also all the ones that today are listed at the END of the movie, too. The copyright notices for all the songs they used, the logos for their camera an…

Thanks for sharing that, I learned something new today already :).

You can see the progression even over the last 10-20 years. We used to see the title of the movie, and then a few minutes of scenery with the actor's names on them. These days it's not uncommon for the movie to start almost immediately with the credits integrated into various background elements.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#87

Post by mmuro »

I agree with him, in principal, that apps should be lighter and faster. However, Photoshop is just a giant program to do lots of complex things. It's a burden I'm willing to put up with (for now) because I have yet to make a transition to a similar, lighter, program.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#89

Post by efa »

rauljara wrote: post #28

Louis CK has a fantastic rant about people complaining about technology being too slow (and technology, in general). It helped to put my own rage in perspective. I find myself getting less pissed at technology since watching it, and I kind of hope that lasts. (NSFW) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grxL5umOE6g&feature=relat...

That was my first thought. Or people complaining about air travel - "when they are in a chair flying 500 mph 7 miles up!"

I find it hard to get worked up about a program that you are going to use for the next 8 hours taking 30 seconds to start. Though I do get annoyed waiting for STS (SpringSource's Eclipse) to start up.

One thing that would be very helpful for these plugin based program would be for them to be configured with the minimum to start with. It takes forever for Eclipse to start up because it's initializing a dozen plugins/services that I don't care about. And it's not always easy to turn them off.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#90

Post by Too »

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.

My old SonyEricsson phone behaves like this. After booting it looks like it's ready but as soon as you try to open _any_ menu you get a "loading"-screen which is even more annoying. Booting a bloated windows xp installation is almost the same experience, from desktop first showing to actually usable is twice the time.

I'd rather have a reliable progress bar that says "go make coffee and come back in 5 minutes" instead of being misled to thinking i can use the program in 30 seconds.

But lazy loading for rarely used functions is of course a good solution, as long as you don't use it for everything.

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