During startup the browser screen shows up 1100ms after tap, but text and earth in background is drawn up to 500ms later. That makes it seem as the whole app starts much slower than it actually does.

My guess is that the text and graphics wait for JS and the solution might be to move the JS code that takes part in drawing startup screen earlier into the cycle.

url to the video. Time markers for browser: - tap: 1:39.8 - screen lightens - 1:40.9 - ttlview shows 1027 - 1:41.0 - text and 1> icon - 1:41.2 - more text and earth icon - 1:41.4

Bug 833515 explains that the tab counter being displayed is currently blocked on IndexedDB being opened, this could be made to appear faster by moving the code out of that callback or simply hard-coding "1>" in the initial HTML. But displaying the text and thumbnails of the start screen will always have to be blocked on the database because that's where this data comes from.

Ben: is the planet/fx logo icon blocked by this? Is the "Web Browser" and "Top sites" and "Enter a search term or Web address..." - cause that's what's showing up that late.

Yes, showing the whole of the start screen is currently blocked on opening the database. We could change that and only block showing thumbnails on the database if that's desired. I think the reason it's currently done this way is that there was a requirement that we should show different strings depending on whether the browsing history is empty (which would be determined by querying the database), but this feature has not yet been implemented.

so we have three scenarios: 1) We do not have access to database yet, but we have a screen to paint on 2) We have access to DB and it reveals no entries 3) We have access to DB and it reveals entries In the third scenario we want to paint thumbnails, in second we want to show helper message, in first we do nothing. My proposal would be to draw everything we can in 1) and after we access DB either add helper text or show thumbnails.