Instead of working to make the splash screens look prettier, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest they should work to make the program load fast enough so it doesn't need a splash screen.

Do you see all that stuff flashing by when say, Photoshop starts up? Those are plugins. I'm not exactly sure what they can do other than remove the features outright.

Anyways, it starts up in roughly 6 or 7 seconds on my spinning rust drive. I can't find this something to get worked up about, especially given the feature set of Adobe products.

Why do the plugins need to load first?

Does the file you're opening use them? Why can't it load faster so if I've made a mistake opening the program I can close it before it does all that plugin loading?

Splash screens are just a lazy way of saying the user's time isn't valuable.

Photoshop plugins don't work that way for the most part. There's no way to tell from a given file "uses" a plugin or not - usually a plugin is a specialized image manipulation method.

>Splash screens are just a lazy way of saying the user's time isn't valuable.

Wow. Hyperbole much? I'd rather get all my loading done up front instead of waiting per file or per action anyways. Secondly, it's 8 seconds or so per app start. Less if you have an SSD or a non-recommended-reqs system. Perspective.

Also consider these are pro-tier applications. The target market isn't going to be exiting their apps again and again, rather launch once and stay inside them.

I dunno about Photoshop - I never use it - but in Illustrator, a lot of core program functionality is implemented as plugins nowadays. For CS5.1, plug-ins/extensions has 53 items, plug-ins/tools has 53.

I guess they could do some kind of lazy loading, but that'd be, you know, work to implement, and they're too busy with stuff like their own (broken) custom window routines to get Windowsesque MDI on the Mac.

The Adobe Reader plugin also loaded tons of default plugins (including JavaScript and 3D support) when opening any PDF. That's (one of the reasons) why it was so slow.

Yea, I remember Kas Thomas talking about that. What is interesting is that he works at Adobe as a Technology Evangelist.

It's not whether they should be plain or colorful...it's whether the splashes jibe with the products (and their positioning) so the two look cohesive together. Adriana (Victoria's Secret) would make a lovely model, but I don't think she'd the first choice for Morgan Stanley.

If you see the new CS6 UIs (and the new tools like SpeedGrade), you'll see "plain and boring" grays, but the look is natural for the pro market. The splashes are completely antithetical to that look, and seeing a colorful Nickelodeon splash leading you to the somber grays in the UI is kind of bizarre.

>I'm a little shocked at the negativity towards, of all things, an icon and a splash screen.

People, in general, just have a hard time dealing with change.

I'm not a huge fan of the new icons/splash screens either, but I'm sure I'll get used to it and in a while CS5 will look dated.