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Splash screens == sloth

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Re: Splash screens == sloth

#141

Post by talmand »

mikeash wrote: post #100
talmand wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Loading on demand is a vast improvement over loading everything up front, though. Loading on demand means you never pay the price for functionality that isn't used, and if your load time is divided into little pieces, it's far more likely to slip into spaces where the user is otherwise preoccupied, thus becoming essentially free. Lazy loading is a way to truly reduce loading time, not just a way to hide it as you see…

Well, lazy loading is a way to hide loading time. But I didn't mean that lazy loading is bad since I think it is rather underutilized in desktop applications. Taking Photoshop as an example, I would explore the means to get the basic app up and running providing basic tools then load the rest in the background not waiting for demand. Loading on demand is nice as long as it can be done quickly. There's nothing worse than having the app loaded, click on a menu item, and then have to wait for that feature to load.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#142

Post by icebraining »

davedx wrote: post #136
alex_c wrote: post #128

A splash screen basically tells me, in very clear-cut terms, that my time is worth nothing whatsoever. It's a fresh reminder that users' needs don't count as much as programmer convenience does. So... how much IS your time worth? How much extra would you be willing to pay for instantly-responsive applications? Programmer time isn't free, either.

Why should users have to pay extra?? The new version of Basecamp (by the guys who invented Rails) focused on speed, because speed = $$$. The question is, why would you throw away your userbase because your app is so slow to load, it's cutting into their productivity? There is a very large gap between 'instantly responsive applications' and Photoshop.

If you're on Windows and you want an editor that loads fast, you can just type mspaint.exe. Oh, it doesn't do everything you need? Yeah, guess what, those extra features take time to load.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#143

Post by orthecreedence »

mikeash wrote: post #100
talmand wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Loading on demand is a vast improvement over loading everything up front, though. Loading on demand means you never pay the price for functionality that isn't used, and if your load time is divided into little pieces, it's far more likely to slip into spaces where the user is otherwise preoccupied, thus becoming essentially free. Lazy loading is a way to truly reduce loading time, not just a way to hide it as you see…

I think loading on demand is a vast improvement in some instances. For something like Photoshop, I'd gladly pay the initial 10 seconds for a more responsive interface. Photoshop is already slow, imagine dynamically loading resources on top of its usual sluggishness.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#144

Post by rwmj »

Every, I'd say, 6 months or so, someone on the qemu mailing list posts a patch to add a splash screen to qemu.

I don't understand why people persist in this:

(1) Most hypervisor start-up screens aren't even seen by most users.

(2) Spend that time and effort making the boot faster, not slowing it down with utterly useless stuff!

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#145

Post by TeMPOraL »

orthecreedence wrote: post #140

Whether or not the programmers of Photoshop can make their app run faster, I have to say it's pretty sad that waiting 10 seconds is worth whining about. I understand this is unacceptable for a web app's page load time, but for a desktop app that loads an enormous amount of resources once before letting you use it seems acceptable to me. I think the real problem is that we are all so incredibly spoiled that waiting 10…

This is just an extreme example of so called 'first world problems'.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#146

Post by icebraining »

chc wrote: post #121
talmand wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That isn't the choice here, though. The choice is between throwing up a big nonfunctional promotional screen or a nonfunctional version of the actual app.

A splash screen tells me "you can do something else, the window will show up when it's ready". A nonfunctional version forces me to poke it periodically until it works.

If the author has the splash screen burned into his retina, (s)he's doing it wrong.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#147

Post by talmand »

peteboyd wrote: post #111

The video game industry has the same issue. Initial bloat screens. A lot. Skyrim for instance, it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to load the initial screen, which is just the logo of Bethesda. You know what is on the initial screen. A button for me to click that says Start. Once I click that button, then I have to hit Continue for it to load the last save point. Then another 30 seconds to 1 minute to load my game/map…

Keep in mind that a large amount of the time you see a splash screen (or five) in a game it's not because of loading, it's because of marketing.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#148

Post by icebraining »

jarrett wrote: post #118

The computers I use now are far more capable than the ones I used in 2005, in terms of CPU, RAM, disk space, GPU, and anything else that should affect an app's boot time. Today, Photoshop takes just as long to boot as it did in 2005. Yet the features I use today are almost identical to those I used in 2005, the only exception being the ability to import camera raw images. (And I'm sure that the binaries for importing…

"I don't use them, therefore they don't exist"?

Of course Photoshop has plenty of new features each version. Just because you don't use them doesn't mean other people don't. It's a known problem: Everyone only uses 10% of the features in software but everyone has a different 10%.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#149

Post by talmand »

bobbyi wrote: post #93
Jasber wrote: post #41

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?

They can't follow the article's suggestion of giving you a mini-game to play during the load screen because that would violate Namco's patent 5,718,632 which covers exactly that: http://www.google.com/patents/US5718632

I had totally forgotten about that patent.

Re: Splash screens == sloth

#150

Post by noblethrasher »

luser001 wrote: post #94

I ranted about this a few days ago. My favorite idiocy on Windows is their background "optimization" of .Net binaries. https://blogs.msdn.com/b/davidnotario/archive/2005/04/27/412... This service appears to perform a large number of I/O requests (probably reading/writing a large number of small files). It will totally consume the disk seek capacity, massively slowing down every other program that is also doing disk I…

But the situation you describe should only happen once for each time you install or update what is a relatively major component of the OS.
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