Network-reliant apps should check for connectivity during loading, this can take a few seconds to verify everything. Would he rather the app doesn't do any environment validation and present errors when trying to run specific tasks? Can you imagine, working on a complex document only to find out when saving that you don't have enough disk space or your network connection isn't valid. Splash-screens are an important time to determine whether everything is there that you need to do.
Splash screens == sloth
181–190 of 246 posts
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#182hey, I have a solution. Buy a damn SSD if you want to load a 1GB program faster.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#183A splash screen seems like a pretty innocuous way of letting you know that the app is not ignoring you. I imagine that not too many people take such violent aesthetic offense to them as this guy. Still, they probably allow a longer load time than users would otherwise find acceptable in their absence.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I understand what he's saying. Sure, your Dodge Neon may take longer to go 0-60 (i.e. it's okay if Photoshop is slower overall), but there would be something wrong with it if it takes significantly longer just to get in the car (i.e. Photoshop shouldn't take longer to boot up).
No, I think the engine metaphor is pretty apt. I completely understand what he's saying, but the alternative he seems to imply is no better. Why would I want the interface to load but not be able to use it for another 45 seconds? Okay, so I'm in my car (clicked on the shortcut) but I won't be able to go anywhere (use the application) for a few minutes because it's slow to accelerate (load). Who cares about the max sp…
I think it makes sense. To extend your metaphor, you can do things such as turn on the radio without noticing a performance difference between the two cars.
The idea with Photoshop is, sure, loading the entire thing will take much longer, but users tend to use one tool at a time, and loading an individual tool shouldn't take anywhere near as long.
It also makes sense from the point of view of parallelization. One example of an extremely slow operation is waiting for the user to click on something. So instead of sequentially loading things, followed by the user deciding what to do, Photoshop should continue loading while the user decides e.g. what brush size and color he/she wants.
Like any other, this approach has advantages and disadvantages - it would indeed be frustrating if the brush tool hadn't loaded by the time you started using it, and it would probably require a lot of work for Photoshop to load so modularly and on-demand - but all I'm saying is, I understand the value in the alternative he suggests.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I think the engine metaphor is pretty apt. I completely understand what he's saying, but the alternative he seems to imply is no better. Why would I want the interface to load but not be able to use it for another 45 seconds? Okay, so I'm in my car (clicked on the shortcut) but I won't be able to go anywhere (use the application) for a few minutes because it's slow to accelerate (load). Who cares about the max sp…
I think it makes sense. To extend your metaphor, you can do things such as turn on the radio without noticing a performance difference between the two cars. The idea with Photoshop is, sure, loading the entire thing will take much longer, but users tend to use one tool at a time, and loading an individual tool shouldn't take anywhere near as long. It also makes sense from the point of view of parallelization. One exa…
To go beyond cars and Photoshop, the RPG Guild Wars is a good example of only loading what you need. In fact, it doesn't even download the other game zones before you need them. If it sees you running towards the next zone, it begins a buffer in the background to pull in the data. So instead of making you wait while the game downloads and installs everything right up front, it downloads then loads up exactly what you need. This is much harder in an application, which is more non-linear.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know you could just close it from the Dock or application switcher, right?
Yes but that requires a click-and-hold, causing the whole dock to resize for the pop-up menu, which is quite slow on my 32-bit MBP maxed out at 2GB RAM. I find it quicker to just click the Preview icon (causing a new window to open as the focus switches), and command+q.
You might want to try command-tabbing and quitting.
Basically with command held down the entire time, hit tab until Preview is framed, and instead of releasing command (which would pull Preview to the foreground), hit Q, which will send Preview the command-q event and cause it to quit.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#187A 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.
Is waiting 5-10 seconds honestly "cutting into their productivity"? Even so, there's nothing else that could be done with their time while they wait beyond impotently staring and swearing at their computer?
If that's how they operate then quite frankly they deserve to have "lost" that time.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 confi…
It only makes sense to complain about any gap between potential and actual performance, though, because that's how things progress. It's pretty amazing to fly across the country with only ~8 hours of time spent in transit. However, just because that's amazing doesn't make it wrong to complain about one of those hours being spent on completely unnecessary security theater. It could easily be 7 instead of 8, and that's…
Certainly scale needs to factor in here. What can you get done in a normal hour? Now what can you get done in one second?
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#189I 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…
You think they put that notification there to annoy you? No, it's because of possible data loss and/or system file corruption if you turn off the power while the system files are being patched. Splash screens exist because the program is loading. If you want the functionality of Paint, or Notepad, open those instead. If you want Photoshop, you open Photoshop, and it takes a while to load because it is gigantically complex. If you want it to load faster, buy a new computer.
Re: Splash screens == sloth
#190if gimp can insta-load, and photoshop gives me a 60 second splash screen, designers are still going to use photoshop. i would prefer Adobe continues to invest in the features that matter, not startup times.