I reached out to David Revoy, he gave permission to use his artwork for these mockups. Thanks again David!


Functions
- the thumbnails are clickable, when clicked, the featured image fades in or cross-fades. Optionally, the thumbs and featured image have an auto-slide with cross-fade as the slide effect.
- New Document and Open Recent, triggers their respective window similar to File > ...
- Close will close this window.
- Website will open a new tab with krita.org.
- Donate will open a new tab with the donations page on krita.org

Feel free to give feedback

Interesting ideas. One thing maybe I missed are what are the problems with the current startup screen that you see. It is hard to know if it is better or not without some discussion or explanations about why you made these changes. Maybe they are good, but it is hard to tell.

I will say for the thumbnails being clickable, I wouldn't expect it to just show more images, but go to the artist's site that did them. The screen is only up for a few seconds, so I don't know if we need to make it more complex with faders and slide shows.

I do see you removed a lot of the current functionality. Can you explain a bit why you don't think those are as important:
1. the recent documents
2. A lot of the other links to things like the documentation, the community, source, steam links
3. It is also really important to put what version of Krita it is. People all use different versions, so it is hard to troubleshoot if we can't see the version they are on.

scottpetrovic wrote:Interesting ideas. One thing maybe I missed are what are the problems with the current startup screen that you see. It is hard to know if it is better or not without some discussion or explanations about why you made these changes. Maybe they are good, but it is hard to tell.

I will say for the thumbnails being clickable, I wouldn't expect it to just show more images, but go to the artist's site that did them. The screen is only up for a few seconds, so I don't know if we need to make it more complex with faders and slide shows.

I do see you removed a lot of the current functionality. Can you explain a bit why you don't think those are as important:
1. the recent documents
2. A lot of the other links to things like the documentation, the community, source, steam links
3. It is also really important to put what version of Krita it is. People all use different versions, so it is hard to troubleshoot if we can't see the version they are on.

Hi Scott,

This is a suggestion for a start screen, not to replace the launch screen (which is currently referred as the start screen). For me it's a cosmetic improvement, as in, it's visually more attractive, including more attractive than the launch screen. Not everyone, but many people out there are like me, judging stuff visually first (form), and if we like what we see, we make the decision to try it out (function). I get the whole 'form follows function' principle, but in reality many people judge on the first (visual) impression.

I honestly don't understand the first two question, specifically the parts I made bold:

1. the launch screen, doesn't have any buttons, so no button to recent documents.
2. again, the launch screen doesn't have any of these.

But...

3. yes, I agree that showing the version on this screen can help potential issues. It can be shown right of the Krita logo


As reference, this is how the launch screen looks like:

right now when Krita first starts, clicking on things will actually cause Krita to freeze on Windows and not actually do anything. What you are showing is the splash screen while Krita is still loading. After Krita gets done loading, it shows additional options such as the recent documents and links. It isn't possible to open a window or recent document before Krita's main window is loaded.

By recent document...Currently when krita loads, it shows a list of all of the recent documents that are open. Can you click the link and it will open that document. This was a faster way than having to go through the File menu.

You also removed a lot of the other links such as documentation and the Steam page. That is what I meant by removing functionality.

So you are suggesting to add another splash page that is a start screen. What would happen to the launch screen then? We once had a launch screen, but people didn't like it as it made it difficult to do things that can't be done with buttons. One example would be to open an image by dragging it from your desktop. Another example would be to just use a shortcut to paste an image as a new document.

Are you suggesting we have both a launch screen and a start screen, or remove one?

scottpetrovic wrote:right now when Krita first starts, clicking on things will actually cause Krita to freeze on Windows and not actually do anything. What you are showing is the splash screen while Krita is still loading. After Krita gets done loading, it shows additional options such as the recent documents and links. It isn't possible to open a window or recent document before Krita's main window is loaded.

By recent document...Currently when krita loads, it shows a list of all of the recent documents that are open. Can you click the link and it will open that document. This was a faster way than having to go through the File menu.

You also removed a lot of the other links such as documentation and the Steam page. That is what I meant by removing functionality.

So you are suggesting to add another splash page that is a start screen. What would happen to the launch screen then? We once had a launch screen, but people didn't like it as it made it difficult to do things that can't be done with buttons. One example would be to open an image by dragging it from your desktop. Another example would be to just use a shortcut to paste an image as a new document.

Are you suggesting we have both a launch screen and a start screen, or remove one?

I think we are experiencing Krita differently. When I launch Krita, the launch screen appears, and when it's done loading, Krita main UI appears, that's it. I don't get any of the stuff you mentioned. I'm using Krita 3.1.0.

The screen with all the things you mentioned, I only see it when I goto Help > About krita. Not in any other occasion.

-----------------

Ah I know what happened, the splash screen is hidden on default installation, which meant that someone like me, doesn't see it nor know it's existence. Ok this changes the conversation a bit

Uhhmm.. the current splash screen has loads of info which fits perfectly under the 'About Krita' label, similar to the About in pretty much all programs. So I wouldn't do anything about that, zero change. I can see why people didn't like it, it's an actual info screen, not a splash screen.

What I would do, is have my suggestion as the actual splash screen. If you don't want to use it, you can hit Close, or tick off the option to see it everytime you use Krita. It's cleaner in design and you have the essentials (not everyone needs the documentation or tutorials to start painting). If you do however need more info, well there is what the info screen is for.

--

The launch (loading state) screen stays, you explained that it's necessary to avoid freezes upon people clicking before Krita is fully and properly loaded.

Within these posts, so far, the terms 'splash screen', 'start screen', 'launch screen' and 'info screen' have been used. There may be some confusion and overlap in the intended meaning.

As far as I'm aware, the picture of the little girl playing with a cat is not called a 'launch screen' as stated but is called a 'splash screen'. There is a Wikipedia entry for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash_screen

According to Wikipedia, this is shown when the program is launching. Oh, so maybe it is called a 'launch screen' Or is it called a 'loading screen' or 'load screen' .....?

The 'info screen' you refer to may be what I call an 'about screen', because you get it by clicking the 'About ...' option. Then again, you could mean something different.

A glossary would be useful.

Kiki is a cybersquirrel She's the project's mascot, which is why we have a new version of her on the splash every major release.

Technically, we use the same thing in three places:

* splash screen: shows up while loading, gives loading feedback
* unless disabled, this morphs into a dialog that allows the user to select recently used files and offers some useful links: the launch/start screen. This can be disabled because some people really dislike it, while others find the list of recent files convenient. It's on by default because it has a clear link to the documentation, in the vain hope that people will use it.
* and this screen is also re-used as the first page of the about dialog (which one could also call the info dialog).

We actually have gone through several iterations of the start screen functionality: in Krita 2.8 and earlier, until you opened a document, the entire window was filled with a screen where you could select recent files, create new documents from scratch, clipboard or templates, or open a file. Back then, Krita could open one image per window.

In Krita 2.9, we moved this screen into a dialog because we made it possible to open more than one image per window, so the new image dialog needed to be separate from the window.

We also added a splash screen; that had links and recent documents, and morphed into a dialog after krita had loaded.

Because the links weren't clickable while Krita was loading, for Krita 3.0, we removed the links and recent files while this thing was in splash mode, and only showed them once Krita had loaded.

When I look at your design, the first thing that strikes me is "you must have used Corel Painter before" -- because of a similar layout and the feature to show inspirational artwork.

What I am wondering about is, when we're talking about the start screen, what do users who like a start screen use it for, and how can we make it more likely that first-time users notice the documentation, forum and especially donation links

boudewijn wrote:When I look at your design, the first thing that strikes me is "you must have used Corel Painter before" -- because of a similar layout and the feature to show inspirational artwork.

What I am wondering about is, when we're talking about the start screen, what do users who like a start screen use it for, and how can we make it more likely that first-time users notice the documentation, forum and especially donation links

I have tried Painter's trial every now and then but not really used it, in fact I forgot it has a start screen if you haven't mention it

To me a start screen is a cosmetic and convenience feature, as in, I am welcomed by a screen that immediately shows some artwork, and convenient buttons to quickly load new or my most recent project. About the latter, when you click on it, I don't want it to show a list of my last 10, but literally the one I had open before I closed the program the other day.

The donation button is highly intentional of me in my design, both for first-time users and veterans, as a constant reminder that they are working with an awesome piece of software that has been developed voluntarily, and maybe enabled them to make a living out of it, so it would be nice to give something back.

About the forum and documentation, as I mentioned before, not all first-time users want to start with reading docs and forum, many (and I dare to say most) are curious and probably want to try stuff out on their own. Krita is very instinctive, when the canvas is created, it's not really difficult to find yourself the brush icon on the left and start painting. No need for docs or forum. So for them, getting shoved a link to docs and forum is simply annoying.

If a user find itself clueless, whether new or veteran, they almost all will try the help button in the menubar as the first step, as it's common for pretty any program in today's world, they find the about, and the rest of the links. I believe that not having those links presented at start, is not a loss or inconvenience at all. In fact, only if you don't have confidence in the program you've developed, you would welcome the user with a link to all the help there is as the first thing they see

I really like the mock-ups here, I also been advocating the idea of having a way to prevent a "static Krita" at the starting point, since most of the basic functionality is only available once you open a document, a while ago, last summer I was intending to add a "new file" button to the window but due to the fact of knowing nothing in programming I didn't manage, (it was for the only purpose of showing a live muck-up on how it will work) then I saw Scott working on the splash screen and the information dialog, thus decided to wait before proposing anything else and see how it will morph.

Here are my comments about the situation of starting Krita viewtopic.php?f=288&t=137022 and I think bottom line with what I am reading here is the fact that "start dialog" would be helpful. Because it will most likely offer the first actions most users would do right after starting the program. to me is either new or open recent.

At some point I was even thinking on how well would work if Krita would open a file by default with some information on it, and a drawing of Kiki or some of Revoy's, then people would open the new file dialog or open/open recent one, which would close the default one without allowing any modification. etc. this is because that would be the only way to have all functions available from the start. But that's a bit off topic I guess.

This "New start screen" idea definitely gets 1+ from me in either case.