Splashscreen for OpenOffice.org 2.0 Wanted

An anonymous reader writes "From the OOo site: 'OpenOffice.org 2.0 is coming fast and it needs a new splashscreen. You can help. Send us your best by 10 December and it might be seen on the desktops of tens upon tens of millions next year.' For more information, visit the OpenOffice.org website."

Comments

What we need more (from a member of OOo Marketing)

[oldosadmin]

We need you to GIVE OUT CDs to friends.

We need you to DONATE MONEY (paypal button on openoffice.org).

We need you to BE VOCAL in your support of OpenOffice.org.

We need you to say "THANK YOU" to Sun Microsystems for donating all the code and their continual support of OpenOffice.org.


And a few friendly reminders. Open Office(tm) != OpenOffice.org.

And to kill the license trolls, we are LGPL.


(and I may get FP!)

Jason Faulkner

OOo RegiCon North America Webmaster

Splash Screens are Evil

[RAMMS EIN]

Splashscreen for OpenOffice.org 2.0 wanted?!

Splash screens are evil! They pop up in front of you, disabling you from doing what you were doing, and don't allow you to start doing what you started the app for. They are just a smoke screen for a badly done application.

The way to do it (assuming you're going to open a window) is to first open the window, so that the user sees the app is launching, and can position the window where he wants it. This prevents popping up a window at some unpredictable future time, which distracts and annoys users.

So what to do if your app takes a long time to load? First off, it shouldn't. You don't have to load all functionality at once, just in case the user might want it. You can load it on demand. Secondly, if loading still takes a long time, you can indicate loading progress in the window you created.

More on Openoffice.org 2.0

[cortana]

The Openoffice.org marketing site has more information about upcoming features in Openoffice.org 2.0.

Just thought I'd let those interested know...

[Roman_(ajvvs)]

... that the splash screen is one of the first things that I turn off when I install a new program and run it for the first time. It really doesn't matter what it looks like to me. It could be the equivalent of Michelango's David and I'd still turn it off.

The primary reason I turn it off, is because I don't want some static, always-on-top window blocking my view of other windows I'm working on. I don't mind programs taking time to load if they need it, just let me read something while it's waiting. In my case, programs rarely get opened up on their own.

Usually splash screens play nice, but they always seems to block something I'm looking at there and then. An about box will suffice if I really find out what I'm running.