What do you think of my implementation of messages on splash screen?

• Apr 15, 2020 - 08:11

PR: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/5929
Comments on the design are welcome!

splash-screen.gif

Comments

• Apr 15, 2020 - 08:41

As a very long term computer user (Fortran, Pascal, APL - remember those?) one of the frustrations with modern computing is not being able to see what is happening "under the hood". I think the reassurance given by showing that something is happening during the start up splash is a Good Thing. Go for it!

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• Apr 17, 2020 - 22:21

I'm with you, SteveBlower. How about: ?

Contacting Bot server...
Downloading malware updates...
Harvesting credentials...
Begin mining Bitcoin... Monero... Ethereum...
Encrypting user's files...
Notifying server Ransomware successfully executed...
Oh, yeah, loading Musescore session...

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• Apr 15, 2020 - 19:18

It's also probably very difficult to predict which step might take longest, and I find misleading progress bars worse than none (eg, the ones that get to 90% after three seconds but spend another ten minutes on the last 10%).

Anyhow, for most installations startup should be fast enough that this is not really a big deal, but it will make great feedback for the few cases where people report unusually slow start. Then we'll know if it's the soundfonts or not, rather than just guessing like we currently do. So, nice!

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• Apr 16, 2020 - 10:57

I do agree that a progress bar would be good.

I am not sure so much detailed text should be necessary for general start (unless otherwise selected in settings).

But I do think that the progress bar and descriptive text for loading extensions would help users to understand why startup may be taking so long (ex: Loading MuseScore Drumline).

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• Apr 16, 2020 - 11:14

For me the information displayed is of less importance than that there is something moving so that it at least give the impression of the computer being hard at work computing stuff and not just sitting around until it condescends to fire up. But if it can also provide useful technical feed back, so much the better.

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• Apr 17, 2020 - 09:41

It assumes you know the %

The current version has almost no impact on coding of the other parts and is a low-risk change that can help in detect startup issues.

For a progress bar or a % to be shown, the thing being done needs to have a (somewhat reliable) way of telling you how far along it is. This information currently does not exist.

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• Apr 17, 2020 - 10:24

Note: The font is consistent with what font you have for the main UI. For me it's High Tower Text. If you haven't changed the default font, then the font the messages use is also the default.

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• Apr 19, 2020 - 15:59

This is just wonderful. The Hauptwerk installer (written in Java) is quite verbose about its activity, and it is reassuring. Linux update is admirable in this regard, too.

The Mac OS update is quite the other way -- a half hour to an hour of more of successive questionable progress bars, blackouts, mouse cursors appearing and disappearing and "fake news" predictions of completion, absent the faintest hint of what it is doing or has done. I think it runs at something like 6 hairs turned grey worrying per minute.

Love the proposal.

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