Splash screen before accessing the app
What needs to be done?
I have the feeling that immediately displaying a screen before showing the loading application could help in several ways :
- This screen is displayed very quickly to the user, improving its perception of speed while the app is still loading is the background.
- It can displays useful information to the visitor, such as motivational quotes like Slack does. I have used the main titles of Happy Dev manifesto for demo purposes.
- It removes the buggy impression when the user is redirected to the login page after several seconds of loading. Here the redirection to the login page is not automatic, it is now the result of a user action. In the future, we could imagine to have several ways to authenticate listed here.
- It gives the possibility to explain a bit more what the app is for, and how to apply for an account. We could even imagine to have a list of the current community members, or a contact form like the one on the happy dev website.
- It does not break the flow for any already authenticated user because the screen disappear as soon as the app is loaded and the user has been recognized.
Technical details
One way to speed-up the identification of a non logged-in user is to read directly the solid-auth-client
localStorage data. If it is not present, or if it has no session, the user will have to go through the login form.
I have developed a prototype (see the feature/splash-screen branch) to demonstrate how it could work. But it obviously lacks design.
Links & Mockups
Here is the demo in video: splash-screen