

Ask HN: Best examples of software welcome screens? - TomGullen

I had a look on Google, and couldn't find much.  The welcome screen is for when you first load the software and it shows you latest news/info etc.<p>We don't want it to be a bloated and full of junk, but concise and clear.  We like Thunderbirds welcome screen (although we are not going to do an HTML one) and also VS 2010 welcome screen<p>Anyone got any examples of really good welcome screens?  And any advice/tips/resources for designing them?  It's a really important entry point so we want to get it spot on.
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makecheck
Personal opinion (so one anecdote, take with a grain of salt), but I hate
welcome screens. Developers should really avoid wasting any time on features
that people could actually despise.

Applications are tools; they should launch as quickly as they possibly can and
with minimal fuss. They should not presume to guess what the user might want
to do, otherwise they turn into Microsoft's "Clippy".

If I launch a program I have a purpose in mind, _and_ I know how that task is
usually accomplished, e.g. in my mind I am thinking that the first thing I'll
do after launch is to open some menu command. Absolutely anything that gets in
the way of my "plan" feels like an unwelcome distraction.

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TomGullen
I generally agree, but our program is hosted on a lot of file sites and gets a
lot of downloads from them. They download it, open it up and are completely
lost as they are presented with the bare interface. We definitely need
something.

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avalore
Pttrns has some examples of welcome screens / walkthroughs for iOS apps...
<http://pttrns.com/walkthroughs>

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slater
How about no welcome screen?

