[sugar] perceived sugar performance

[Eben Eliason]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org> wrote:
> > We have a completely different approach to activity launching in the
>  > works (I've been hacking it up myself...I need some help from the pros
>  > to finish it!)
>
>  Why are we building a splash screen instead of speeding up activity
>  launch? We know that programs can put up full-screen windows in
>  0.1-0.5s.

We have considerably sped up activity launch, and we can do so
further.  That certainly benefits us as well.  Still, the launch
feedback needs to be immediate.  I'd much rather have an immediate
result (the pulsing icon) visible for 3 or 4 seconds than a 2 or 3
second delay before I recognize that my action took effect.
Furthermore, this approach reinforces the zoom metaphor, which we've
been trying to find ways to improve as well.  finally, it sets up
circumstances which could support the interactions mentioned below,
allowing one to work elsewhere in the edge cases where launching does
take considerable time.  It think overall the new design will be much
more gratifying for kids when then click on an icon, and will go a
long way to preventing kids from simultaneously launching too many
activities, which is one of the biggest points of feedback from the
field.

>  > Do to window manager limitations, it's non-trivial (as I understand
>  > it) to prevent the system from automatically returning to the newly
>  > launched activity when its ready.
>
>  {{cite}}

I honestly have no idea on the technical details.  Marco, can you
clarify the difficulties here?

>
>  > Of course, the much desired interaction would be to allow the user to
>  > go elsewhere, *not* automatically return them, thus pulling them out
>  > of their working context, and instead show a standard notification to
>  > indicate that the launch was successful.
>
>  So why aren't we doing that?

Because of the difficulties implied above...if we can work those out,
we should be doing this.

- Eben