Usplash design suggestion

[Michiel Sikma]

Hi guys,

I suggested that we change the font size for usplash a while back, which 
started a small discussion about the possibilities of changing around 
the design of the thing. I've now, as promised, finished some mock-ups. 
I hope that any of these will be chosen to make up the splash screens of 
Ubuntu, since I think that they're much better to me and the other 
non-hacker users. If there are suggestions, please make them and I will 
create another mock-up that portrays them if you like.

NOTE: I got the base of these mockups from the screenshots on OSDIR. 
Upon looking them up, I encountered what I believe is a bug in the 
current splash screen; the logo seems to be squished vertically by 
around 20% (80% vertical size of the original) in the normal splash 
screen: http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/622_or/2.png - instead of 
using the logo from that screenshot as a base, I used the one from the 
CD startup screen as seen here: 
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/622_or/1.png which seems to be normal.

It was mentioned that the pixel font I used should be made larger and 
wider. Instead of doing it myself, I figured that I might as well use 
the same font that's used in the CD splash screen, since it's very nice 
and big enough. Please note, however, that it isn't a monospace font. 
It's variable space with very little variation (I think only the 
lowercase r, i and l are a bit shorter, and the m is one pixel wider). 
All letters are followed by two pixels of spacing.

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_0.png 
- This is the splash screen as it is now, with the new font that's also 
used in the CD splash (which is also why the text that you see is 
nonsense; I just copied most of it directly). I brought down the amount 
of lines of text on the screen from 10 to 8 in order to increase 
vertical spacing, which I believe makes this look pretty good. 16 colors 
(including the red "fail") are used (for this and all other images).

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_1.png 
- another suggestion was to make a new progress bar that matched the one 
used by default in the operating system itself. Regardless of whether 
it's too difficult to include or not, this screenshot shows what could 
be possible, graphically (see also the last screenshot further down).

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_2.png 
- There was talk of dropping the text altogether and using a simple 
"Starting up..." notification. I think that this would be the best thing 
to do. As such, I suggest that this screenshot is worked into the final 
product. The positioning of the logo, text and progress bar were 
hand-tuned; something to keep in mind in case anyone is going to make 
this live.

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_3.png 
- The shutdown equivalent of the above picture.

Here are some other mock-ups that just show some random thoughts I came 
up with while making this. They're not necessarily suggestions, but I 
felt like posting them here anyway.

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_misc_4.png 
- Copyright notice at the bottom of the screen (in a smaller font).

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_misc_5.png 
- Hotkeys that could do something while the system is booting up. I'd 
prefer this to start the system in safe mode over the boot menu, personally.

http://omega.avalanchestudios.net/personal/dropbox/usplash/_usplash_misc_6.png 
- another version of the _usplash_2.png mock-up, but with a small 
reflection below the progress bars. I love the way this looks, but I'm 
not sure if it would be easy to implement. The dithering of the glow was 
hand-tuned.

I hope that you'll like these mock-ups. I think that the _usplash_2.png 
mock-up would be a good alternative to what's currently happening in 
usplash and feel that the common user would most benefit from seeing 
this during startup. Hope to see your replies soon.

Regards, Michiel