Output - Loading Screen

During their initialization state, applications can show a splash screen (a picture shortly displayed at the beginning) and/or a "Please wait..." dialog box. The splash screen is useful if you wish to display your company's logo or something related to your application's contents, while the dialog box informs your end users that the application is being started. Because the initialization phase can take several seconds due to the size of the Chromium engine, this dialog box informs your end users that the application is loading and prevents them from immediately trying to launch the application again. Both the splash screen and the dialog box can display a progress indicator.

Splash Screen¶

To enable the splash screen, just specify the image file to be used for the splash screen (an absolute path is required, path variables are supported: see below) and set how long it should be displayed (in seconds). You can also allow end users to close the splash screen by clicking it (recommended). Note that these two options are only available in some cases.

The following image formats are allowed: PNG, BMP, GIF, JPEG, TIF.

Please Wait dialog box¶

The "Please wait..." dialog box displays the text of your choice, something like "Loading application, please wait...". To change the text displayed, use the Language tab and modify this resource string: SLoadingPublication.

If you do not want to display this dialog box, then enable "No initialization dialog at startup".

Please Wait panel at startup¶

At startup, instead of a blank window, a panel bearing a "Please wait" text is shown while the CEF engine is loading the contents. You can customize this text by editing the resource string named SCEFPleaseWait.

Replace initialization dialog box by the splash screen combined with a progress bar¶

The splash screen can also be used as a progress indicator while loading the application. With this option, a progress bar is displayed at the bottom so that end users know that the application is busy.

You can customize the progress bar's colors by clicking Customize Progress Bar and then editing all properties available.

External Splash Screen File¶

By default, ExeOutput for PHP compiles the source splash screen file into the EXE. If you prefer to have a customizable splash screen, you can place your own image file into the Data subfolder and name it splash.img. The application will load this custom splash screen file instead of the default one.

Notes¶

1. please try to use small splash screens: large splash screens may take longer to draw because in some cases, data needs first to be decompressed (like for PNG or JPEG).
2. the splash screen file is not stored in the project file. It should be available as an external file when the application is being compiled. Path variables like [PROJECTPATH] are allowed.