[PIVOT-754] Pivot displays ugly gray box sometimes before it loads the applet

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2
• Fix Version/s: 2.5
• Component/s: wtk
• Environment: Observed both on Linux and Windows Vista, Firefox 3.x and Firefox 4.0.1; Java 6 update 25.
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Piotr Kolaczkowski
• Created: 08/Jun/11 11:47
• Updated: 08/Aug/13 16:00

Description

When the applet starts, a progress bar is displayed. When the applet finishes downloading, the progress bar disappears, leaving a gray box until the pivot toolkit loads the application. Even for the simpliest application displaying an empty window, pivot requires about 0.3 s to start (on Core2Duo 2.2 GHz), so the gray box effect can be easily seen. The gray box effect does not happen always, but in about half of the cases.

Below I submit patch we made to the BrowserApplicationContext.java file. Seems like setting the applet's background to white and delaying the add(displayHost) call as late as possible does the trick:

[code]
51a52
> private boolean displayHostInstalled = false;
151c152,154
< add(displayHost);
—
>
> // Don't add it now, add it later, to avoid ugly gray box:
> //add(displayHost);
160c163,164
< setBackground(null);
—
> // Huh? WTF?
> // setBackground(null);
191a196
> installDisplayHostIfNeeded();
245a251,257
> private void installDisplayHostIfNeeded() {
> if (!displayHostInstalled)

{ > this.add(displayHost); > displayHostInstalled = true; > }

> }
>
247a260
> this.setBackground(Color.white);
309a323
> installDisplayHostIfNeeded();

[/code]

Issue Links

• is related to: PIVOT-755 Improve User Experience when using Pivot Applets/Applications from the Web Site