[FC7 theme proposal] Flying High with Fedora 7 - Round 2

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi John,

John Baer wrote:
> I do agree splash screens should not be at the top of our list and to 
> Fedora's credit Open Office and Gimp do load quickly, but I also feel 
> strongly we should not lose site of what we are trying to accomplish.
> 
> "Provide the best user experience possible!"

How do OOo, Gimp, and Eclipse splash screens provide the best user 
experience possible...? They don't. They provide a fuller 'brand 
experience' for sure, but that's different from 'user experience' 
(former benefits us more than it would users.)

The best user experience possible is applications loading up so quickly 
you don't need a splash screen to provide feedback that yes, the 
application is loading.

> I would remind everyone many of the other distro's 
> (Ubuntu/openSuSE/Zenwalk/Vector/and the list goes on) have decided to 
> theme the splash screens of Open Office and Gimp. I do not know how they 
> came to that decision but I believe they simply want to provide the best 
> user experience possible.

We need to be a leader, not a follower. Just because others are doing 
something doesn't mean it's a good idea.

> Although I have not provided a submission as of yet, one could easily 
> apply the same arguments (pro/con) to the Gnome Screen Saver Lock 
> screen. Perhaps the grub splash screen as well.
> 
> I would encourage us to not focus on what we can't do but rather focus 
> on creating everything we can to provide the "best user experience 
> possible". We started early, we have the talent, let's go for it!

I don't really think we are focusing on what's possible so much as what 
is reasonable and in our users' best interests. I think davidz is 
absolutely right in pointing out the splash screens probably shouldn't 
be there in the first place - the apps should start up faster. For us to 
ask package maintainers to add splash screens to apps would take their 
time away to implement really cool features and bugfixes that really 
have a greater positive impact on the user's experience.

~m