The Windows CE splashscreen is currently just an empty gray box with a blue progress bar. I'm assuming that we actually want to put something pretty there!

We actually do have some artwork that I've been using, it's just not checked in anywhere. Here's the bmp.

Steven, can you pick this up? We'll actually need 3 versions to checkin as part of the build... Firefox, Minefield, and unbranded. Vlad's BMP is just temporary, so it doesn't need to be based off that. We control the drawing of the splash screen and progressbar, so colors/sizes/positions can be changed. See any of use with the giant prototype boards if you'd like to see the current stuff in action. :-)

Justin, I am not in MV anymore. Is there any way I can get a screenshot of this in action? Thanks!

The screenshot is 800x600, but the actual screen is ~1024x600 (it's widescreen, but some OS bug keeps forcing me back to 800x600). It's currently on the screen for ~15 seconds until the main window is shown.

What size does it need to be? Steven: I would suggest we use the new icon, perhaps cropped (a la About Firefox box) with the wordmark. Vlad was using the website background because he needed something to go there, not, I think, for any particular aesthetic or branding reasons.

Yeah, that is about what I was thinking. I need to get the new icon artwork from Alex. Is that the native WinCE progress bar?

It can be any size, the current code will use the size of the provided bitmap. I don't see any other splashscreens with the OS build we have, so I think it's just "use our best judgement". FWIW, vlad's placeholder looks about right to me, but is maybe a bit too tall. The progress bar is drawn manually, so that can be changed. See http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/xre/nsSplashScreenWin.cpp

Yeah, it will most likely be seen on 1280x720 displays, but shouldn't be overly large.

I'm not sure we want to use the royal order illustrative style here, it kind of feels like the icon and the web design are going in two different aesthetic directions, and its all a lot to take in just during the time of viewing a splash screen. Either way, as dolske mentioned over lunch everything is superior to a list of names and patents (Thomas Knoll, Seetharaman...)

Here are some initial ideas I had for this. I tried few layouts.

I guess one thing I should have mentioned before is that, at least currently, the progress bar only moves in 10% chunks. And it is a bit jumpy because a couple steps of startup take a long time and we can't easily update progress from inside them. So it might be good to keep the bar shorter so the jumps look less clunky. But if that doesn't work well visually, we can probably try to tune the progress steps a bit.

I think I like left middle the best. Is it worth trying to create a subtle visual tie into the aesthetic of the launcher being deployed on these devices in the background of the image for the color or texture? (sort of a wallace and gromit claymation thing going on, so might be hard to match the spirit of their design). Also, are we capable of having curved corners in the splash screen?

here is the launcher: http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/02/video-tegra-based-mobinnova-elan-running-windows-ce-on-tegra-ro/

(In reply to comment #12) > Is it worth trying to create a subtle visual tie into the aesthetic of the > launcher being deployed on these devices in the background of the image for the > color or texture? Without actually using it, it's hard to say. Might be something worth exploring. That image of the launcher isn't clear enough for me though. Could someone get a better shot of it? > Also, are we capable of having curved corners in the splash screen? That's a good question. I was thinking CE was more around the level of XP without the capacity for really doing rounded corners or alpha transparency.

Sorry to be a party pooper... no rounded corners or alpha on the window, and also when we draw the progress bar, it pretty much has to be a solid color for this. :(

(In reply to comment #15) > Sorry to be a party pooper... no rounded corners or alpha on the window, and > also when we draw the progress bar, it pretty much has to be a solid color for > this. :( But we could overlay the solid color bar on a textured image?

Not sure what that means... we can draw the solid color bar on top of the splash screen image at any location, if that's what your asking?

We could treat the splash bitmap like a CSS sprite... Eg, given a 400x216 bitmap, show the upper 400x200 as the splash screen, and blit the lower 16 rows up to the progress bar area (width dependent on current progress state). That would require a little bit of code change, and imposes a format requirement on the bitmap, but it wouldn't be a huge deal.

(In reply to comment #17) > Not sure what that means... we can draw the solid color bar on top of the > splash screen image at any location, if that's what your asking? Sorry, I was kind of vague. Here is what I had in mind. Make the background part of the progress bar part of the image and then just overlay a solid color on that.

That would work. As would the inverse (progress bar is 100% in the image, and we draw a flat background over it).

Here are two options that I think work well. A horizontal one and a more a vertical one. I have a question about the Unbranded version. What is it for exactly and is it meant to contain any other elements?

The unbranded version gets used for alphas (eg http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.1a1/releasenotes/), and I think is also intended to be a generic base that 3rd parties could use to release a browser with -- though anyone serious would obviously provide their own custom branding. You could put "Namoroka" on it, though it's also fine just leaving it blank. Since we're still working directly with the OEM, I suspect we won't actually create unbranded alphas until at least 3.7 or later (by which point it won't be "Namoroka"). But as long as someone has the original art, I suppose that's trivial to update...

(In reply to comment #21) > Created an attachment (id=389943) [details] > WinCE Splash Screens I think the horizontal one works better. Although it feels like it's a little too wide (in terms of aspect ratio, not actual size). The vertical one is a bit too big (in terms of actual size), but I think it will still feel unbalanced on the 1024x600 widescreen. Random note: the 1px black border is drawn by the OS, so when you chop up the final .BMP versions that should be left off.

Is the last attachment what we should use? Might as well get this checked in if so...

Comment on attachment 395450 [details] WinCE Splash Screens Final pretty :)

This patch contains the artwork from attachment 395450 [details], and updates the drawing of the progress bar to use the new color and position (as shown in attachment 388751 [details]).

Comment on attachment 395501 [details] [diff] [review] Patch v.1 >diff --git a/browser/branding/nightly/splash.bmp b/browser/branding/nightly/splash.bmp >zR_LuAxMTjwsvWZEZFbNO)*v@_s8g%$;1X+$cH{=ti>Fv^W=r-_MODSdnvSL(8>nDc fix typo here, looks fine otherwise

Pushed http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c4678bf7b3fb (In reply to comment #30) > fix typo here, looks fine otherwise Ha. :)

Pushed to 192: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.2/rev/7dc6cd0b7ae9

Verified fixed on 1.9.2 using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WindowsCE 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2a2pre) Gecko/20090903 Namoroka/3.6a2pre. Verified fixed on the trunk as well.