Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by Carson on Feb. 9, 2008 · permalink

Hi, Mel,

I wonder if you know that years and years ago, maybe when Firefox was still Firebird, there was a heated debate which raged for some time about a splash screen. I think it was just before Firefox came out. And it was a surprisingly angry debate. What you have created in Splash is exactly the thing that quite a few folks said should be an option. The opposition were purists who felt any splash screen would (for some reason) be a sell-out of sorts, not in compliance with the spirit of what was to be the ultra-fast new Firefox.

Well, of course, Firefox showed up as much slower in loading than IE 6. There was actually a time when Firefox cheated on the results and claimed it was much faster than it was. But IE is partially loaded all the time, and Firefox, as time was to show, would never be a fast loader, no matter what.

I really like your splash screen, and I have it tweaked to remain visible until the browser is ready to display its first webpage. I do this because Firefox takes about 20 seconds to load in my system. Before your Splash, I often wondered whether Firefox were really loading or not, and I guess I called up Task Manager maybe a hundred times to ascertain whether Firefox were dead or alive.

Thank you very much indeed, Mel. You have at last settled an argument of so long ago.