jeudi, juin 18, 2009

Use a .png for the SplashScreen (i.e. no longer use .bmp)

A bit less than two month ago, I modified OOo source code, to be able to load a .png splashscreen (same story for the about too). I received a nice help from Thorsten Behrens, Philipp Lohmann and Herbert Duerr, who explained me what do (the most clean way to do), how to remove the transparent places and more.

After fixing a bug on Linux (the renderer not correctly initialized), it works nicely on both Mac OS X and Windows since end of April, and on Linux (all ports) since early May (because of the bug).

OOo4Kids 1

Design of the OOo4Kids logo : Ben Bois

As you can see, I added the possibility to play with transparency. One other reason to choose .png was that the .png are lighter than .bmp. Finally the gain was around 360 kB, compared to the .bmp

This is not perfect (some little white pixels due to rounding in the corners ), but gives IMHO a better User Experience, and opens the door to Funky Splashscreens :)

Of course, if one ask me, I'd be glad to backport that into OpenOffice.org source code (not sure because one told me there was something else in progress ... so, I don't know).

Important: we do not distribute anything publically, and will replace the OpenOffice.org application icon in the dock (and provide our own) asap .

To be continued ...

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