Splash

Splash screens always bothered me. They unnecessarily take up screen estate (and right in the middle of the screen, the place you need most) just to tell me that my application is loading. I know that it’s loading — I launched it. None of my other applications load right when I click their icon, and they don’t need splash screens.

IMHO, the splash is the most annoying and unnecessary UI element in the history of UI elements. And I want to at least replace it with something less annoying.

Splash meets Start Center

The first way to do this is to load the start center instead of the splash screen. That way, you don’t have to just sit and wait while LibO loads, but you can pick which app to work in or open a document. If LibO’s not done loading yet, you’ll get a progress bar under the task you chose.

You also get window buttons, so that you can hide the splash or close LibO if you opened it by accident.

PLuP

The first splash proposal applied only for LibO the application. This second proposal applies for the various applications of the suite (Writer, Calc, Draw, …), since those don’t use the Start center.

This is what their miniscule “splashes” would look like:

They’d be transparent, positioned on the bottom of the screen, and either centered or right-aligned.