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

[From: Mika Yrjölä]

On 08/03/2008, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  Reading the recently released iPhone SDK's Human Interface Guidelines
>  document[1], I came across an interesting idea: every application has
>  a launch image configured which is immediately displayed on launch to
>  improve the user experience.
>
>  The theory goes that because the user sees something which looks like
>  the shell of the application whilst it loads, they feel the
>  application is loading faster:

>  I think this is a concept which would work well in Hildon: a PNG image
>  the size of an unmaximised window could be specified in the .desktop
>  file, on selection of an application the Task Navigator would load and
>  show that image immediately in a window titled the name of the
>  application, and the "<application> loading" infoprint would also be
>  shown. As soon as the app loads and opens its first window, the other
>  window is closed.
>
>  For example, a mockup showing a suggested launch image for the File
>  Manager can be seen at:
>
>    http://www.bleb.org/software/maemo/file-manager-launch.png
>
>  As the Apple guidelines point out, the real window which is shown may
>  have localised labels etc., so there's no text shown. I've also greyed
>  out the button bar to show the user that it's inactive.

While the idea doesn't sound entirely bad, the image should IMO be
closer to the real application appearance than the FM mockup; as some
people have stated, it looks rather like the application has crashed,
or something has gone seriously wrong in startup, and might give a bad
impression. The current startup, while perhaps giving some impression
of slowness, looks more polished IMO.

Then there is also the question of theming; even if the application
would have separate skeleton startup images for several themes (eating
the precious storage space), consistency still goes out of the window
if user installs a new, probably different-looking theme.