Skip the splash screen in your apps

Someone reported a “bug” in GoodDay that they “didn’t like the splash screen” I used:

And I admit that I’m not a designer, but I thought this was a clean screen to show while the app was loading.  Until…

I started playing with the built in Apple apps and realized they don’t use a splash screen.  Watch the iPod app open if you want to see what I mean.  They basically load a shell of the UI and then the UI renders on top when it’s ready.  So I set this as my goal.  I built the following “Splash” screen.

In my opinion:

  1. It makes your app feel like it’s loading faster than it is.
  2. You’ll fit in more with expecations that have been set by the default apps.
  3. You don’t have to design a splash screen. 🙂
  4. Apple’s style guide recommends this approach as well… and Apple is never wrong… right?

Now, if you are using PhoneGap to build your application for the iPhone you’ll notice a bug loading the default.png file where it “jumps” 20 pixels right before your app loads as shown here:

If you want to fix this issue you’ll need to tweak the main PhoneGap library code in the following way:

  1. Open PhoneGapDelegate.m

  2.  Roughly around line 188 you’ll find:  imageView.tag = 1;

3 After that line add: i_mageView.frame = [[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame];_

Hopefully future versions of PhoneGap fix this issue, but for now this will have to do.

Enjoy!