643605 - Feature Request: Optional Splash on Start-up

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 198605

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[veganaiZe]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Firefox/3.6.15
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Firefox/3.6.15

I'm thankful that Firefox doesn't try to some sneaky pre-loading trick, but it does take it a long while to map into memory the first round (if the OS isn't prefetching it anyway).  Without visual sight of the HDD LED, and the know-how to look at it in the first place, a user might be tempted to attempt to launch the browser again.  The end result, frustration.  A simple splash image could reinforce the fact that a browser is actually loading.

I personally prefer clickable splashes, that disappear when clicked anywhere above their window area.


Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Comment 1

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

Oh no please, Splash Screens are so .... 90s ;-)
Rather Fix the "slow" Starting Behavior =)

Comment 2

[Jo Hermans]

It was removed a *very* long ytime ago, back in bug 198605. The browser wasn't even called Firefox in those days ...

Comment 3

[veganaiZe]

Wow...  Really, that's the excuse huh?  

1) As long as firefox has so many nice add-ons, and all of the other **** that is difficult for anyone who is not a hacker to disable (specifically: things in about:config that should have a check/radio box somewhere in preferences) - IT WILL TAKE FOREVER TO LOAD - That is *the* nature of large software.  So, unless you decide to single-handedly rewrite firefox to follow the proper principles of programming ("do one thing, and do it well") by ripping the gecko out and making it a stand-alone , extendable via plugin only, it'll always be what it is... maybe there's hope for v4 (don't even get me started about memory leaks).

2) The idea is that it is CLICKABLE, that makes it go away.

3) And the excuse that "It was remove a *very* long time ago..." is about as valid as "We shouldn't do that, someone else hasn't done it first"

...But all-in-all, Firefox has become very bloated, and I would rather see the code tightened back up again as well.

Comment 4

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

As XtC4UaLL stated, I think it makes much more sense to reduce the startup time to the point where a splash screen isn't even needed, than to add one in - which will only serve to slow startup even more.

As it is, Firefox 4 startup is much improved over 3.6.x (if you are still experiencing slow startup times with Fx4, try using a clean profile) - plus work on Ts will inevitably continue for Firefox 5+, making the user confusion about delays at startup even more of a non issue. 

There is of course the problem of slow startups caused by addons (that can undo all the hard general Firefox Ts wins), but the addons performance testing (bug 599169) plus the disabling of third party installed addons until the user explicitly allows them (bug 476430), should help to alleviate this - or at least mean the user knows why startup is slow.

For reference, IE 9 and Chrome don't use splash screens either.

Comment 5

[Jo Hermans]

(In reply to comment #3)
> 3) And the excuse that "It was remove a *very* long time ago..." is about as
> valid as "We shouldn't do that, someone else hasn't done it first"

Can't I even point out *why* it was removed earlier ?

If a user is confused what is happening if an application doesn't immediately react, then it's a problem for the operating system, not the application in itself. That's why GUI's started to use different methods, like bouncing icons and other animations. A splash screen is not the only solution.

Comment 6

[Siddhartha Dugar [:sdrocking]]

See Bug 198605