1724343 - Investigate showing a skeleton window for Thunderbird before/while xul.dll loads during startup

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Firefox improved perceived start-up time on Windows by opening a skeleton window while xul.dll loads. We could benefit from doing the same thing.

Doug, I've had a brief look at some of the early implementation patches and it seems to me that only a small fraction of the work is specific to Firefox, and therefore Thunderbird already has the rest. Is that a fair assessment? How hard would it be to get a skeleton UI in Thunderbird? Even a blank window would be an improvement, I think.

Comment 2

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

I don't think it would be hard at all. I don't know much about Thunderbird's startup though, so maybe there are gotchas there, but I doubt it's anything significant. I imagine most of the work would just be building a different set of ColorRects in DrawSkeletonUI.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU75b2FP9kU&t=6s shows the difference achieved by firefox (a link at https://blog.mozilla.org/performance/2021/08/05/performance-in-progress/ )

Comment 4

[Matt]

What is the lengthy blank window that often appears now without any content, followed by a folder pane and finally some emails.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Matt from comment #4)

What is the lengthy blank window that often appears now without any content, followed by a folder pane and finally some emails.

With what version and OS?
Screen shot?

Comment 6

[Matt]

Attachment: OriginalCroppedtoOneMonitor.png

Comment 7

[Matt]

Attachment: SecondaryViewCroppedToOneMonitor.png

Name Thunderbird
Version 102.8.0
Build ID 20230214184313
Distribution ID
Update Folder
C:\ProgramData\Mozilla-1de4eec8-1241-4177-a864-e594e8d1fb38\updates\D78BF5DD33499EC2
Update History
Update Channel release
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.8.0
OS Windows_NT 10.0 19044
Application Binary C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe

The first image appears, followed by the second and finally I get the display with a reading pane occupying half the windows fully populated and a folder pane showing my local folders.

I posted my comment here, because I thought what was being investigated was already extant. It was not making me think the application loaded faster, but it looked like a skeleton to me.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Matt from comment #4)

What is the lengthy blank window that often appears now without any content, followed by a folder pane and finally some emails.

You don't still see this, do you?