Generally the idea of a splash screen (as this is called) in Mac apps is frowned upon, by developers and users alike (though users seem to mind slightly less than developers, from my experience). What you should instead do, from my advise, is to asynchronously load your data on a background thread, and disable any relevant UI elements in the main interface until the load is done. This way, your main thread will stay responsive, letting the user explore their options whilst they wait.
If you are targeting Snow Leopard, you can take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch to leverage the async capabilities with great ease to accomplish this feat. (Pardon the weird language, I've just seen Alice in Wonderland a few times with the kids, it's stuck in my head now.) Or, you can take the approach I just started with my apps at http://www.thoughtfultree.com/ and display an introductory splash screen that explains how to use the app using images (and movie files if needed). Another nice example of this is in the app Things.app That is all. -- Steven Degutis http://www.thoughtfultree.com/ http://www.degutis.org/ On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Michael A. Crawford < michaelacrawf...@me.com> wrote: > I'm looking for techniques on how to display a startup or loading panel for > my app. There is some initial processing that needs to be done and it can > sometimes be moderately lengthy in terms of making the user wait. > > What I'd like to do is display a startup graphic with licensing and > copyright information as well as perhaps some updating text fields. Well, > maybe I'll add the updating text fields later. > > Anyway, I thought of changing the structure of my app so that the main nib > displays the startup and then loads what used to be my main nib with my > primary view, menu, etc. I'm not experienced enough with AppKit to know > whether or not that is a good approach. > > Any suggestions? It looks like there are plenty of applications that do > this sort of thing on startup. How do you guys implement this type of > behavior? > > -Michael > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) > > Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. > Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com > > Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: > http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/steven.degutis%40gmail.com > > This email sent to steven.degu...@gmail.com > _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
