151–160 of 246 posts
Don't you think it's odd he is complaining about splash screens when Adobe is responsible for the worst thing to ever happen to the web -- those stupid flash intros ? Talk about a waste of time, you had to wait for the time waster to load and then wait for it to play
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.
You're thinking like your existing users will have to "pay more" to get a faster experience, when in reality you are losing money because of the would-be users who give up and go away. A few days spent reducing load times and ironing out delays can make an application feel fast and increase conversion rates. Plus it makes everyone feel good about using the product. Delay==Frustration.
Now if you're lucky, perhaps your startup is in a situation like Adobe where they pretty much have a lock on high-end graphics editing and can say, "You will wait for our splash screen because you have no other choice and we're kinda busy making money here so just wait." That kind of thinking will get your users mad, but since you were lucky. But they'll remember, and have no qualms about bailing out the first chance they get.
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> 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…
But quite a few of those ideas are useful.
The only ones I thought were a bit out-there were the ones about "just processing it in the cloud" while the local copy is still loading. But other HNers are probably more qualified to judge how realistic this is.
What is a possibility, however, during loading a lot of time is spent on loading all sorts of modules, ones that might not even be used that session, and most definitely not in the first few minutes. Because what is the user going to do first? Most likely it'll be `File > Open ...` and browsing through the filesystem looking for whatever project they intend to open.
You don't need any plugins for that. And it's exactly the type of task that spends relatively a lot of time waiting for user input and not so much time computing or loading things. During this task the app can continue loading modules and plugins and the user doesn't have to wait because they're selecting a file.
You probably need to disable (most of) the instant preview in the file open dialog until it's done loading, but that's a minor trade-off.
Of course you're loading the modules necessary for opening files first (most recently used filetypes first). When that's done the dialog can start showing previews. If the user happens to have found and selected their file before it's done, then, only then they'll have to wait.
Now you're loading the file and it's showing on the screen, the user can browse the layers a bit and ponder where exactly they left off last time. A wonderful time to load the rest of the modules! Of course the features used in this project will be loaded first. If there's no text layers, we can put off loading font-rendering support in favour of other modules.
It's not all load-on-demand, but a lot of user tasks are not as processor- or data-intensive as you'd think, because the user is busy thinking and as long as the UI is responsive enough they're happy.
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.
I don't disagree that responsiveness and user experience are important, but Basecamp is a webapp. Responsiveness for the most common tasks is a higher priority than the one-time cost at start-up.
I'm not sure anyone is "throwing away their userbase"... How many people stop using Photoshop because it takes too long to start? Now, Acrobat Reader on the other hand...
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I guess this is sort-of the idea behind OSX behavior where an App is running with no open windows. They WANT you to leave everything running in the background. As a longtime Windows user, I still find this confusing, but I think they're trying to make everything appear to "load" instantly because it's just always running... sort of like on a phone.
At first I didn't like it, but I've eventually started to really like this in OSX. Having a ridiculous amount of RAM to "waste" may have helped change my mind. My only gripe is that I wish it were a per application setting. Some apps, like my browser, mail program, the terminal, Emacs, ... I love having start quickly, even if it's because they were just in the background before. Other stuff, like Preview, I don't use…
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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.
Out of curiosity, when was it? Wasn't openoffice.org an option?
OP has a point. Not a f*cing important point, but a point. UIs can and should be faster, Adobe and MS are slow to catch on with current user expectations, and splash screens are annoying relics of a bygone era of bloated desktop UIs. Agreed. But in the end, to me it's just one more instance of Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk I guess I just don't get the tone. Why th…
Splash screens aren't there for the vanity of the development team - they provide immediate visual feedback to the user that the application is loading any necessary libraries. I'm also at Adobe and my team recently performed a ground-up re-write of our application. Minimizing start-up time was a high priority item and we did as much as we could to reduce it, but file importers/exporters, codecs, and some plug-ins ne…
How is that useful to a user? How many users even know what a "library" is? It might as well have a status bar announcing "Doing TECH thing 1 of 50...."
It seems to me that a splash screen is just a diversion: showing the user just how much Really Important Stuff it's doing hides the fact that they're basically being told to Please Wait. You're trying to make it look exciting, when the truth is it's just getting in the way.
It might as well just splash with "PLEASE WAIT" with no progress bar and no status. It has the same utility.
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…
When I saw this, I was sure you were wrong. However, looking on Newegg[0], 12GB RAM is about $60. That's just crazy to me.
[0]: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=381...
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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…
Seriously? I mean, my Dodge Neon has the same gas, brake, clutch and steering wheel that a Ferrari 599 has, why doesn't it 0-60 as fast? Stop comparing engine size and complexity, it has all the superficial elements of a sports car! God, you're such a mechanic.
Hardware, software, network, total users, i/o, it didn't matter, it was better to say something than let users sit there at a terminal thinking nothing's happening.
Or worse, tell their boss the "system's down again."
No excuse for them today. They just say "big app", it's gonna be awhile.