[maemo-developers] Launch image to increase feeling of responsiveness (a la iPhone)

[From: Michael Wiktowy]

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:
>  Yes, I'd imagine this in addition to the bubble, to add an illusion of
>  starting the app quicker.
>
>  It'd have to be implemented at the dbus/Hildon Desktop/Task Navigator
>  level - rather than each app - as the app in question is in the
>  process of loading. If it could show itself, presumably it would!
>
>  At the moment, much of the reaction[1] has been on the negative side
>  of ambivalent - but I'm hoping to put together a mockup tomorrow
>  demonstrating it in action (entirely faked). That should give us all
>  an idea of how well it might work.

It is an interesting idea but I can see how some might be ambivalent
to Apple's implementation. Spending more resources (storage space for
bogus images, non-zero CPU time and battery life) and *actually*
slowing application launch just to give the *perception* of speed may
not be the correct direction to head.

There has to be a way to implement this at the toolkit rendering level
to show the actual barebones window that will be filled with widgets
and connected to the backing functions before the entire app is loaded
completely. That way some actual work is performed that isn't wasted
while all the non-visual background stuff is sorted out. A good
example is how the Canola folks are handling things. They bring up a
themed environment to give progress updates in.

So this could conceivably be handled just by writing apps with this
"early-display" concept in mind. It is along the same lines as the
work going on in some Linux distros to get X windows up and display
gdm early and let people log on while all the other services are
coming up in the background.

/Mike