h a l f b a k e r yWhat was the question again?
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How many times have you accidently let your mouse stray over a speed menu bar and clicked and then waited while some bit of bloated Gatesware takes over your system's resources for what seems like ages, before finally the menu bar appears and you can stop the damn thing?
Why not have a cancel button
on the splash screen (I think that's what it's called - you know that irritating panel telling you what you're waiting for) so accidental launches can be terminated?
[link]
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Preferably, do away with that splash screen. (Even better, do so by speeding up the load process. You don't really need to load all those plugins to display the frame and menu...) |
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Doh! Task managers do that. The whole "original" point of a splash screen was to let the user know that the program is in some form of startup period. Doing transaction management (meaning shut down cleanly) requires you to be UP in the first place. Killing a nascent process could be dangerous. Sure the OS should make the file system and other low-level systems safe. If the program is managing other higher-level resources, it could be dangerous. |
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OK, right here goes Task Managers. Task Managers are there to allow you to terminate programs that have not closed themselves properly and cannot be closed in the usually manner. (ie. when MS Word crashes...!) Task Managers are NOT EVER a quick way to close applications. If you terminate applications inappropriately you will leave Temp files all over the shop, and various files open when you don't want them to be. If you do it enough, eventually you will have to restart the machine in order to be able to run anything without it crashing! |
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...and now - Splash screens. Splash screens are there for 2 purposes. Primerilty they are there to let the user know that the application is busy actually doing something. (And stop the impatient idiot clicking the icon repeatedly and loading 12 copies) The system is undoubtedly to busy loading to responde to user interaction. Try getting a faster PC, most apps load in under 4 econds on my home PC... |
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I love the Windows mindset.
"Don't even think about trying to
take control of your computer. If
you do, it could become (waves
hands ominously) *unstable*."
Since Windows is naturally
unstable, those predictions
inevitably come true -- but now
the user blames themselves for not
Following the Rules, rather than
blaming the operating system for
being crappy. "Next time I'll be
good, I promise!" |
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Applications do *not* leave "files
open" when they are terminated. |
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Anything which takes 4 seconds to
start on a modern PC is a sign of
something terribly wrong. |
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Of course, if Microsoft were to do this (they wouldn't, as it goes against every design "principle" that can be distilled from their products, but let's pretend), the "cancel" button would take the focus, so you'd have to be careful not to press space or enter if you actually wanted the program to load... |
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Personally, I just go with kill on Linux, or the Task Manager on Windows. (Of course, Microsoft managed to screw this up in Win2k by requiring a process to reach the task manager that takes just as long as that program takes to load, and by making the Task Manager use a ridiculous amount of system resources. But I'm ranting.) |
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Wouldn't destabilizing an unstable OS actually make it stable? |
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Croissant for sticking to The Man. |
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