
How Google Chrome for Mac appears to launch so fast - johnw
http://www.shipsomecode.com/software/what-dropzone-learned-from-google-chrome/
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jodrellblank
_So, while I’m certainly not recommending people start adding this code to
their apps to provide the illusion of a faster launch_

Do. I want the illusion of a faster launch almost as much as I want a faster
launch.

What is it people rave about when they try SSDs? Is it the shock resistance?
The power use? The noise? No. It's primarily "Wow, everything starts so much
faster!".

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jdbeast00
um...i would imagine that if SSDs provided the illusion that applications
loaded faster without actually improving performance, people wouldn't be
shelling out $$$ for them.

~~~
philwelch
You'd be surprised. CVT's (Continuously Variable Transmissions) in cars will
smoothly adjust upwards in engine power, RPM, effective gear ratio, and
audible pitch instead of pitching down and jerking at upshift like a
traditional transmission. Supposedly, people had the illusion that CVT's
weren't powerful because they didn't have audible "shifts", so CVT's were
actually redesigned to provide the illusion of behaving more like traditional
automatic transmissions.

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tumult
It's important to point out that doing this is a bad idea (as the author of
the article notes.) The behavior specified by this plist value is meant for
daemon processes. Google is using it because they run daemon processes for the
window renderers in Chrome. The daemons need some of the Cocoa application
stuff to render things like form inputs with native widgets, so they have to
use some 'real' (NSApplication) Cocoa application stuff to get that that,
which normally creates a dock icon for you (instead of just running a UNIX
process.) This Info.plist value suppresses that behavior, along with the dock
icon bounce and some other important stuff.

The author then goes on to ignore his own advice, and shows us demoing the
trick in his own application.

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pygy
It makes sense for the author to use it, since he wants to emulate the
behaviour of the "Recent Applications", etc. Dock folders. A bounce is
unwelcome in this case, and the other benefits of the normal application
startup (like being registered in the "Recent Apps" list) are useless for him.

~~~
tumult
It does make sense in his case. It's still a hack, and he's still ignoring his
own advice :)

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Oompa
A brilliant hack on Google's part. And it obviously works if the zero bounce
is mentioned by others and used as an example of it's speed.

~~~
enomar
_"What’s interesting is that the Chrome developers are actually doing this to
workaround a completely unrelated issue involving the WebKit UI and it has
even been filed as a bug. And to think we all thought they had done it
deliberately to give the impression of a faster launch. Shame on us all."_

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kingsley_20
Lookup UI feedback times. Bouncing the icon will actually make it appear
_more_ responsive. Same reason that for the few seconds that a web page takes
to load you see some kind of spinning icon or page load indicator. Not having
those reponse animations make the software look unrespinsive, not fast.

